Secrets & Revelations
by mushroomfaeries
Summary: Emily Prentiss and Jennifer Jareau: the timeless cliche of the dark, brooding secret keeper and the protective, real-life equivalent of a guardian angel. Secrets can only remain hidden for so long; this is the tale of Emily's unraveling. Trigger warning for self-harm (rated M because of this), and general warning for the progression of a romantic relationship between the two.
1. Chapter 1

It began with the simplest of things. Keeping secrets gets tiring, you know, and anyone who's kept a secret for as long as this is bound to lose their magic, concealing touch. Emily Prentiss- queen of compartmentalization, patron saint of hiding things- had gotten sloppy. Not so sloppy that just anyone could look at her and understand the chaos, of course, but sloppy enough that the well-trained eye could notice a few… anomalies.

Perhaps there never would have been a problem had one Ms. Jennifer "JJ" Jareau not become such a damn good profiler. And perhaps there never would have been a problem had that same woman not grown up with background experience in all things self-destructive and morbid, courtesy of her late sister. We can ruminate on "what if"s forever, of course, but that would be wasted breath, because there was a problem.

It was one of their infamous Girls' Nights Out. JJ, Emily, and Penelope, all feeling much too overwhelmed from work to bother with a bar scene, gathered around a corner booth in a small, dim coffee shop: JJ and Emily side-by-side, with Penelope across the table. The shop was well-heated by air vents and candles, and so despite the frigid temperature of the outside world, JJ and Penelope had shed their coats and scarves, and sat with sleeves pushed up past their ankles. Only Emily kept the sleeves of both her blouse and sweater pulled down over her hands, feigning a chill. This, JJ noticed with only a passing interest, and no trace of concern- in fact, the only word her mind could spare on the topic was, "Huh."

The night wore on, and thank goodness this particular coffee shop catered to late workers and insomniacs, for surely the girls would have been kicked out long ago in any other shop. Penelope scampered up to the counter in search of more tea, while the other two women sipped their coffee silently- until a gaggle of strangers from the street threw the door open, and the loud noise and sudden rush of cold air startled JJ and caused her to jump about three feet in the air, knocking her coffee over in the process. The hot liquid rapidly spread across the table and seeped through Emily's sleeves, and she, too, jumped: "Christ!" Emily near-shouted, grabbing napkins and blotting at her sleeves.

"Em, I'm so sorry! You'd think, for an FBI agent, I'd be less jumpy, huh? Here, give me your arm, I'll help-"

"No!" shouted Emily, the panic in her voice virtually palpable in the air. They looked at each other for only half a second, until JJ's inquisitive eyes left tears to well up in Emily's defensive. "I mean," the brunette added, clearing her throat, "no, it's fine. I can handle it." And so she blotted at her sleeves until they were dry, but slightly sticky, and she did not look up until she felt JJ's stare soften.

Here Penelope bounded back to the table, setting her chai down gently and sliding back into the booth. "What'd I miss, lovebugs?"

Emily fast answered, "Nothing, except JJ being a bit of a clutz…" and shot a teasing look toward her blonde companion in the hopes of easing the tension. JJ responded with a small smile, and quickly eased back into conversation, but she could not stop the proverbial gears from turning in the back of her mind: of course such a small occurrence is not enough to launch a slew of suspicions into her mind, but JJ briefly thought back on Emily's past behavior- she never changed in front of JJ when they shared a hotel room, nor allowed an article of clothing to stray out of place, nor joined the team on their occasional summer beach trips… but long sleeves had never been such an issue. The blonde elected to move on, think no further on it, but store this incident away in the back of her mind should more suspicions be aroused.


	2. Chapter 2

**Obligatory Disclaimer:** these characters are not mine. There is a laundry list of names I credited in the last chapter which I am far too lazy to retype now.

* * *

Emily Prentiss spent the days following what she had come to call the Coffee Shop Incident chastising herself for having even possibly given herself away. Sometimes, when a secret has been revealed in such a subtle way, the secret-keeper simply knows that the jig is up. _Who the_ _ **fuck**_ _do you think you are?_ thought she, pacing her apartment at approximately four o'clock one morning, _How can you be so stupid? You work with_ _ **profilers**_ _, for fuck's sake! You can't afford to raise the slightest suspicion…_

Emily knew that this was not simply about the Coffee Shop Incident. It couldn't have been about something so inconsequential- but reviewing her behavior around the blonde for the past few weeks, Emily knew that she had been slipping up left and right. She'd been wincing whenever she moved too quickly, and displayed the classic signs of someone hiding something- avoiding eye contact when asked about her personal life, spending more time alone than usual… Not a single other member of her team batted an eye, but JJ had watched her sister's stability deteriorate rapidly. JJ, she knew, with her perpetually broken heart and her abnormally strong maternal, protective instincts, was the momma bird always on the lookout for broken wings she might mend.

Emily knew not what frightened her most about the idea of JJ learning that the Great, Unbreakable Emily Prentiss was, in fact, breakable. It would be quite the blow to her ego to reveal any sort of weakness, and of course JJ would have to report such a deviance from healthy coping to Hotch, and how could one forget that it felt so very _juvenile_? After all, if she was ever confronted, what was she to say? "Oh, yes, Jennifer, I cut myself. Intentionally. Why? For shits and giggles, I guess!" Emily was quite sure that she could not have chosen a more infantilizing method of self-destruction.

And then there would the the question of _why_ , and coming from JJ it would not be the demeaning, patronizing, "pull yourself together, child, we have a gala tonight" conversation she'd had with her mother so many years ago. JJ would be all wide doe eyes, lips parted ever so slightly in a pout, "why do you have to do this?" and, God forbid, "why couldn't you come to me?"

So Emily spent until sunrise trying to think of ways to divert JJ's attention to more benign topics should this one ever be mentioned, and, as soon as she felt she could go to work without seeming suspiciously early, she kissed Sergio upon the head and darted out the door. The empty apartment had come to feel far too menacing.

* * *

Immediately after the door to the conference room closed, Emily and her team were informed that they would be taking a trip to Connecticut. Girls from a private school in Greenwich had been going missing, one a day, for the last three days, and none had been found thus far. The school was out of session in light of the investigation, and police presence had been increased by threefold in the area. Emily spent the flight engrossed in a book- _Fahrenheit 451_ \- and JJ attempted to play chess with Reid (she lost a grand total of eight games, and Spencer was even trying to go _easy_ on her). Occasionally, their eyes would meet across the plane, and the women would take turns looking away awkwardly. Both felt the tension, and neither were certain if the other felt as uncomfortable as they did.

The uncomfortable silence between the two was broken, for they had a ritual that no amount of awkwardness could change: at the end of every flight, as the jet prepared to land, JJ would move from wherever she sat to meet Emily, close her eyes tight, and hold her breath. Plane landings wreaked havoc on JJ's body- her ears felt full of thorns, her head pounded, and she always felt she might cry. She thanked her lucky stars at every plane landing that Emily was so accepting and unquestioning of this need for comfort; she was humiliated that, after all her years with the BAU, she had not yet learned to tolerate plane landings.

So JJ knocked her own king over, abandoned Reid (who would have felt insecure about this had he not grown used to JJ's and Emily's regular end-of-plane rendez-vous) and ventured across the jet to sit beside Emily, and she pulled her legs up against her chest and waited for Emily to glance up from her book and notice her. It took a few moments, but the wait didn't particularly matter; what mattered was Emily's arms around her, the soothing _shhhh_ , the promise that it would be over soon.


	3. Chapter 3

By the time JJ and Emily retreated to their hotel room for the evening, JJ had completely forgotten that she was ever concerned about Emily. Unfortunately, Emily could not afford this luxury: she had spent every day of her life since early adolescence on constant guard, and now was no different. So as JJ flopped back on her bed and let out a heavy sigh, Emily chuckled softly and hid in the bathroom to change. JJ, eager to discuss something other than missing girls and unsubs, called out to Emily through the closed bathroom door.

"Em," she said, "do you want to rent a movie or something?"

Silence.

"I mean, I know we're supposed to get some rest before going back to work, but this case… I just sort of thought some distraction would be nice?"

Then Emily let out a breath so deep that JJ could hear it, and said, with the sharp twinge of pain in her voice, responded, "Yeah, Jayj, that'd be great… you find something, anything. I'll be- I'll be out in a minute." Healing wounds, you know, can be more painful during such activities as changing than they are when they are first inflicted. Emily winced more at the sound of her voice than at the shooting pain in her arm, though she berated herself for that, as well- _Stupid!_

"Em, you alright?"

Emily nodded in response to JJ's concern, and then realized that JJ couldn't see her. Pulling on a sweater, she exited the bathroom, and flashed JJ the biggest smile she could manage. "I'm great!"

Still concerned, but knowing that further questioning would only lead Emily to shut down, JJ mumbled an _mmhmm_ , and hit "play" on the television. A romcom so generic its title was irrelevant even to its viewers lit up the screen; Emily shut off the lights and crawled onto her bed.

Ten minutes into the film, after the protagonist had been fired from her job and met the handsome mystery man, JJ felt a strange and powerful urge to be closer to Emily. It came partly out of a need to protect the woman who so clearly had some hidden trouble, and partly out of a need to be comforted. Too much was going on; there was too much to worry about- the girls in this case, the unfamiliar secrets Emily was clearly keeping, and the anniversary of Rosaline's death was only weeks away. JJ's protective nature had a way of strengthening relationships, but it came with the colossal drawback of intense anxiety about her loved ones and those who may need her help.

So JJ slipped out of her bed and sat on the edge of Emily's. "Can I just sit here for a while?" she asked, and Emily, though half asleep, whispered a quiet "yes" and reached for JJ's hand. She shook herself slightly more awake so that she could clearly ask, "Jayj, are you okay?"

JJ drew in a shaky breath and rubbed her thumb across the back of Emily's hand. "I'm alright," she said, her words trailing a heavy sigh. "You know… I mean, you don't know- Ros, um…" and here JJ lifted the hand not holding Emily's to toy with her necklace, "Ros died in February. On the fourth."

"Which," Emily continued in JJ's place, "is exactly three weeks from tomorrow."

"Yeah. Um… yeah."

"Come here, Jayj," Emily whispered, drawing her companion closer to her. "You know I'm- you know we're all here for you, right?"

JJ said nothing, but absentmindedly moved to toy with the fabric of Emily's sleeve. It was a nervous habit of hers to play with the fabric of her own sleeves, to pull it this way and that, to wrap it around her thumbs, but tonight she wore a tank top, and so sought that comfort in the sleeves of her friend. Emily, lulled into a state of peace by the safety she felt in that moment- and how strange she thought that feeling, for she never felt safe around others, only in solitude, accompanied by her cat- had let her guard down completely, something she never let herself do. She allowed JJ's thumb to graze the skin of her forearm, and when it touched healing wounds, it was not Emily who jumped. Emily, in fact, was practically asleep at this point.

It was JJ who froze, withdrew her hand, and lay awake all night attempting to figure out what the hell she was meant to do next.


	4. Chapter 4

**A/N:** Look, we've ventured into the realm of confrontation! Thanks so much to everybody reading :~)

Four o'clock in the morning. The bridge between January 7th and 8th. The fifth floor of a hotel in southern Connecticut, room 314. Jennifer Jareau, pacing back and forth in the dark, whispering so quietly that even she couldn't be certain that her speech matched up with her thoughts. For all she knew, she could have been reciting the alphabet. Verbal mutterings aside, her thoughts raced:

 _Okay. Okay. This is fine. You don't even know that there's a problem! Maybe you're overreacting. Okay. Look at the facts. She's secretive, but you've known her for years; what do you know for certain? You know that she moved around a lot as a kid. She speaks, like, a gajillion languages. That's not important. But the moving around thing, that's gotta be rough, right? And you know how she talks about her mother, especially when she's drunk, it sounds awful…_

 _God! What am I supposed to do? I don't even know what the problem is! I don't know! I can't- I can't help, I can never help, I couldn't- I couldn't help- I didn't even know that Rosaline- I couldn't-_

And then there was quiet sobbing, gasping for air, borderline hyperventilation. There was a soft thud as JJ fell to her knees, and then to the floor- you're okay, stop crying, stop it-

And then there was a gasp, and a great flash of brightness as the newly awakened Emily Prentiss turned on the lights and rushed to JJ's side, kneeling and putting her arm around her. "Jayj, Jayj, sweetheart, it's okay. It's okay. I'm here. Please, please take a deep breath. You're safe. Nothing's going to hurt you. You're safe. Shhh…" Emily pulled JJ close, rested her chin on JJ's head, and held both of her hands. When JJ's breath was shaky, but no longer rapid, Emily ventured to ask: "What's going on?"

The phrase "what's going on?" felt, to Emily, far too casual for the situation, but she clearly couldn't ask "are you okay?" when JJ was so clearly not okay. After a moment of quiet deliberation, she changed her question: "How can I help?"

"Em," came JJ's weak response, and then a long pause as she tried to choose carefully her next words. "Em, that's… what I need to know. How can I help?"

This left Emily's heart to stutter and stall. She held a shaking, weeping, frail woman in her arms, and she wanted nothing more than to comfort this precious life- and still JJ responds with this query, laced in unnecessary guilt and shame, that any profiler could see meant more than "I want to help." It clearly meant, "I should have already helped, and I didn't. What now?"

Emily's sleeves, which were very loose and had been pushed up past her elbows as she slept, came tumbling down. "Jayj," she whispered, the single syllable barely more than an exhale. "Jayj, it isn't… about you. It isn't your job to help!" These words, meant to sound reassuring, meant to let JJ off the proverbial hook, came out unfortunately sharp and defensive.

"Isn't it, though? Emily, you can't honestly expect me to just watch as you- as you-" JJ's speech was scattered, and her breath grew slightly shallower, slightly faster once more. Emily attempted to smoothly maneuver her way from kneeling at JJ's side to sitting, cross-legged, in front of her without her breaking the physical contact they had established. Emily stared at her lap, sorting out her thoughts and deciding which ones were benign and which were too cryptic or too revealing. She had never, ever spoken at length about this- certainly not to her mother, and she had never been very close to anyone. Even Matthew, who had held her hand during her abortion, the final act in what had been the most overwhelming, life-altering (possibly life-destroying) time in her life, knew nothing of Emily's self-destructive tendencies. At this point, she had frightened JJ to the point of a panic attack- she at least owed her friend a fragment of truth, then, didn't she? But how was she to simply let go of the secrets she'd worked so hard to keep?

Emily took a deep, deep breath, and genuinely forgot to let it out until JJ squeezed her hand. "As I self-destruct. I know, Jen, I know this must be so scary for you, and I am so sorry. But please, please don't worry about me. I'm not going anywhere, okay? I just… I get overwhelmed, I get… I have bad days. And I don't always deal with them as well as I should. But that's all. There's no danger, Jayj."

JJ's voice rose above the whispers they had been using, and became strained, but still existed at a neutral, conversational level so as to avoid waking their teammates in the rooms surrounding. "Fuck, Em! Do you really think there's no danger? Do you really expect me to believe that you're fine, that you-" and here her voice grew much quieter, but no less intense, "that you _cutting yourself, you intentionally hurting yourself_ , is as no big deal? Is just 'not dealing well with a bad day,' like you're having one glass of wine too many or staying up all night worrying?"

"Okay," conceded Emily, holding on tight to JJ's hands. Now was evidently not the time to argue. "Okay, maybe I'm minimizing it a little. But the fact remains that I am generally safe, Jayj! I take care of the cuts. I'm not suicidal. I promise you, I am not going anywhere."

"I want to argue with you, Em, and I don't want to wait to have this conversation… but it's going to have to be put off until we're back home, and we're not due to work on a case in an hour and a half. You know I'm supposed to tell Hotch… I mean, you carry a gun, for God's sake…"

Now it was Emily's turn to panic. Her eyes grew wide; her face grew pale. "Jennifer, you do not need to do that. Please, at least give me a chance to explain myself- let me prove that this doesn't need to be brought up outside of the two of us."

There was a long pause, and JJ looked more stoic than Emily had ever seen her. She pressed her lips in a straight line, and moved her hand from Emily's to toy with her sister's necklace once more. "Alright. We'll talk back in DC, and as long as you can promise to keep yourself safe until then, I won't tell anybody."

Emily crossed her heart, nodded vigorously, and leaned in to kiss JJ on the forehead. "Thank you, Jen. I really do promise."


	5. Chapter 5

Emily spent the following four days on autopilot. It was a simple enough case; though they came too late for the original three victims, the unsub was actually quite sloppy. Two more girls were taken, and both were found alive- though their lack of physical wounds said nothing for their certain emotional trauma, and worrying about the girls' emotional wellbeing kept Emily occupied for the entire plane ride back to DC. JJ, much to Emily's relief, left the topic of Emily's self-harm completely untouched until they returned home, just as she had promised.

JJ's goodwill could not, of course, remain so strong for long. After Emily soothed JJ throughout the plane landing, they exited the plane side-by-side, and JJ whispered: "My apartment. One hour." Both women feigned exhaustion when asked by Morgan to go out for celebratory drinks- after all, they had found two girls alive. Not every case was that lucky.

It was eight in the evening when Emily arrived, slightly shaking, at JJ's building. She paced outside for a solid ten minutes, but when at long last she was settled onto JJ's couch, she was overtaken by a strange sense of calmness. She knew people and what they wanted to hear. She had spent her entire life training to keep up appearances. Sure, her secret was out, but that didn't mean JJ had to know all that much about it, right? JJ opened a bottle of wine and poured two glasses, one of which Emily took gratefully, although she'd secretly held the belief since her first taste of it years ago that wine tastes "like sad, angry grape death."

"So," began JJ, taking her seat, "talk to me."

"Talk to- Jayj, I'm sorry to disappoint, but I don't have much to say."

Silence. JJ really had mastered the art of interrogatory silences; she stared Emily down until the brunette was forced to add: "I mean, I know you're worried, but it isn't… necessary. I don't have a tragic story or anything. I just… do things. Sometimes."

JJ took a deep breath, either to stall and give herself more time to sort out her words, or to keep her anxiety level manageable. "Emily Elizabeth Prentiss…" and Emily scoffed at the use of her full name as JJ held out her hands expectantly. Emily was allotted a moment of blissful confusion before realizing that JJ was asking to see her arms. So what then? She couldn't show JJ her arms! Granted, her arms were really the least war-torn of any place on her body, but she couldn't bear the humiliation of deliberate scrutiny of her wounds… but then, if she refused, JJ was liable to assume the damage was far worse, and that could cause a great deal of trouble. Slowly, feeling nothing but fear of JJ's reaction, Emily held out her arms, sleeves still down. JJ gingerly moved one sleeve up just past Emily's elbow, and then the other.

JJ couldn't keep small gasp from escaping her throat, but made a valiant attempt to appear neutral. She brushed her thumbs lightly over Emily's pulse points, and stared in silence. Her stare, at least, was soft, clearly more sympathetic than scrutinizing. Emily looked down, as well: to her, they didn't seem so bad. A few still healing, a few faded scars, but surely not grounds for panic.

JJ strongly disagreed. She had caught a brief glimpse of them at the hotel, but still her eyes, unused to the canvas of Emily's scars and skin, saw wounds that surely must have needed stitches at some point, healing, but certainly recent. A few looked _too_ new- JJ suspected they had been inflicted within the last few days. There were scars fully healed, as well, but not faded enough to be overlooked by the now-crying blonde. A teardrop fell from JJ's eye, rolled down her cheek and landed in the upturned palm of Emily's hand. "When did it- um, when did it start?"

 _When did it start?_ was almost as horrible a question as _Why do you do it?_ There were too many memories, too many things Emily had tried to forget. God, she'd promised herself that she wouldn't get into detail- all she would do was reassure JJ that her life wasn't in danger, and that would be that- but there was something about the intimacy of the moment, and the feeling that maybe somebody could try to understand, that forced her words to flow as if independent from her rational thought. "The first time, I was fifteen. I had moved around so much, and never fit in, and… you remember being fifteen, don't you? All I wanted was to be accepted. And there was… a boy. Isn't that always how these stories start?" Emily chuckled, attempting to bring some sarcastic humor into the discussion. JJ sat, wide-eyed and silent, until Emily continued. "Look, he liked me. And I tried to like him, too, because maybe things would have been easier that way, but I just couldn't. We were at a party- I had sort of a rebellious streak then, so we were both drinking, and um. Um, well things went too far. A few weeks later I found out that I was pregnant. This is- God, Jayj, this is a really messy story, I'm sorry. I don't know how to tell it.

"There was another boy- not in the same way, just a really close friend, Matthew. He took me to the Church to talk to the priest, who said that… if I had an abortion, I would no longer be welcome in his congregation. But I couldn't, you know? I couldn't… go through with…" Deep breath. "Matthew took me to see the doctor, and he stayed with me the whole time, and he walked me into Church afterward and just stared the priest down. And nobody said anything to me at first. Of course, word gets around, especially when dealing with adolescents and their bad decisions, and suddenly I was the scapegoat for everybody's bad children. You know, this woman's daughter started drinking because of my bad influence, and this woman's son was failing school because of me, all that sort of thing."

Shaking her head in an attempt to clear her thoughts, Emily shifted her position on the couch. "Here's the thing, though, Jayj: it's so easy just to say that that's why it started. I hurt myself because I had an abortion and everyone hated me. It, ah... definitely got a lot worse because of that, but I remember the first time. I remember it in the most… sickeningly vivid way, and it was the night of the party. Or the morning after. I hadn't slept yet, but the sun was going to rise, and I sat in my room just thinking about what had happened. I couldn't stop feeling his hands, you know? I couldn't forget it. I just felt sick, and nothing would fix it, and I- it sounds so juvenile, but I hated myself. I just…"

Emily trailed off, and busied herself with refilling her wine glass and JJ's. When it became clear to JJ that her companion was through confessing that particular misfortune, she leaned forward and gently brushed a fallen strand of hair behind Emily's ear. Tears had welled up in the corners of both women's eyes, but neither had allowed them to spill over yet.

"Emily… I wish I could take all of it back. I wish-"

Emily cut her off here. As painful as telling her tale was, it was easier to do that than to listen to anyone express their condolences. "Anyway, um, it just kind of… happened sometimes. I didn't really want to talk to people anymore. I sure as fuck didn't want to talk about my problems. So I tried to learn to separate… feelings, I guess, from everything else. The whole compartmentalization thing. I got pretty good at it, too- I suppose you could say I was fairly depressed as a teenager, but by my second year of college I had sort of pulled myself together. I'm not depressed, JJ, I really am not. I know it's the epitome of a maladaptive coping mechanism, but I was always clear about it, rational. I kept it so well-hidden, never anywhere obvious, and everything was going… _swimmingly._ " Emily concluded her sentence with a harsh laugh and an obvious avoidance of eye contact.

 _She's shutting down_ , thought JJ, _she's shutting me out again_. JJ then was faced with two options: she could push Emily to continue on as open as she had been at the start, and thus risk ending the discussion permanently, or she could allow Emily to be more guarded- but vow to someday soon learn more. She chose the latter, and, in a voice quieter than that of a very shy child, asked, "Until?"

Emily laughed once more. _Yes, until_. "Until I got sloppy, I suppose. And desperate. There was a series of really rough days, and I… well, you know. I sort of stopped caring about keeping things hidden, and didn't control where I was… cutting. And once that line was crossed, there was really no going back. I hadn't, um, done it on my arms in a long time, so it was easy to forget to be careful. And then there's you, and, you know…"

"No, Em, I don't know. What about me?"

"You make it hard to keep secrets. You make it… you make me… Um, I just don't really know how to keep things from you." Emily paused, seeming like she wanted to say something more- and she did. She wanted to add, "Nor do I want to." She wanted to add, "It scares the hell out of me, but I want to tell you things." These confessions, though, would have left Emily far too vulnerable, and she'd let down her walls enough for the night. The two fell asleep on the couch shortly thereafter, an impromptu slumber party complete with the confessing of secrets.


	6. Chapter 6

**A /N:** Sorry for the slight delay on this chapter; I would have liked to have kept up posting every day, but that's probably not reasonable with schoolwork. Anyway, I felt it was time for a more lighthearted chapter :~) As always, thank you so much to everybody and reviewing! It means a lot xo

/

JJ woke up first, and found herself laying with her neck uncomfortably propped up against the side of Emily's torso. Emily had fallen asleep sitting up, a talent of which JJ was ever so slightly envious. The air smelled like it always did- like vanilla candles and gentle laundry detergent- but for once, JJ was mindful of it; light filtered in through the windows, dulled by the drawn curtains and giving the room a pleasant, dim warmth. It was one of those picturesque moments of solace which left JJ concerned that even a breath too deep would shatter the perfection. Despite the aching in her neck, she remained exactly as she had been when she woke up, thinking of nothing, watching dust particles swirl about in the air. She could feel Emily's breathing from there, feel her chest rise and fall, and if she listened closely, there was the quiet murmuring of a heartbeat.

Emily's head lolled to the side, her hair just long enough to brush JJ's forehead, leaving a few dark strands in her eyes. It was a colossal annoyance, really, but JJ attempted to sit with it for the sake of Emily's comfort and to avoid breaking the peace of the moment. When her eyes began to water from irritation, she slowly shifted into a sitting position, and rose from the couch. The hollow feeling in her stomach had been growing more prominent as the sun rose higher in the sky, leading JJ to the very obvious conclusion that it was time to make breakfast. She herself had never been the biggest fan of pancakes, but they seemed like the safest bet if she wanted to actually make something for Emily, and, besides, she'd had her grandmother's book of original recipes just sitting on the kitchen counter for ages; the pancake recipe therein was rumored among the Jareau family to be the best in all of Pennsylvania. And, besides, she had the proper ingredients in her mostly-empty kitchen. So she set to work.

The flawless image of the morning then was replaced by chaos. JJ made a perfect stack of pancakes for Emily and was preparing to wake her up, only she forgot that she'd left batter still in the skillet. It began to smoke and burn; Emily was woken up by the fire alarm going off and, startled, jumped from the couch, tripped over her own two feet, and hit on her head on the coffee table. The brunette shouted a string of expletives while JJ began to laugh hysterically, removing the skillet from the stove and opening a window so as to allow the smoke to dissipate. When the noise quieted down, Emily shuffled into the kitchen and snuck up behind JJ, who had, after checking to make sure that Emily was okay, set to work cleaning up the kitchen.

She leaned in close, forgetting for a moment her usual strict boundaries, and said, "You really didn't have to make breakfast, you know."

When JJ, surprised by the sudden closeness and noise, spun around, she found herself face-to-face and almost nose-to-nose with Emily. There was perhaps a two inch space between JJ's face and Emily's. For a brief moment, dark eyes met light, both dilated, both wide, both belonging to silent women who held their breath… until JJ's eyes flickered down towards Emily's lips, and Emily took the break in eye contact as an opportunity to step back.

"It, ah, it was my pleasure," said JJ, "the breakfast."

"Right, the breakfast."

"Well, um, here you are," JJ handed Emily a plate of pancakes, "you can go sit; I'll be there in just a minute." Silently, and trying not to analyze the previous encounter- _we literally just made eye contact. Eye contact. Calm yourself down!_ \- JJ poured herself a bowl of cereal and joined Emily at the table. The blonde had hardly sat down when Emily began laughing.

"What?" JJ demanded, suddenly very insecure, though she hadn't any idea why.

Emily gestured to JJ's open pantry. "Three types of children's cereal, baking supplies that look hardly touched, animal crackers, and nothing else. Jayj, you're an eight year old."

"I- I have been been grocery shopping in a while! I've been busy!" JJ attempted to defend herself, petulantly crossing her arms and pouting.

"You have a stack of animated children's movies by your TV, but your bookcase is filled with the Brontë sisters, Jane Austen, Shakespeare. You have… _phenomenal_ reading skills for an eight-year-old."

"I hate profilers."

"You practically _are_ a profiler."

"That's not in my job description!"

"True, but you know that if we were in my apartment, you'd be making similarly specific observations about me. Which is remarkable, considering you're an eight year old."

JJ stuck her tongue out for half a second, but, upon realizing that was precisely what an eight year old would do, retracted it. They locked eyes, and both women burst out laughing. JJ, hanging her head, offered up more ammunition: "You know, by the end of August I start counting down to when grocery stores sell Halloween-themed food. You know, Count Chocula, ghost-shaped fruit snacks, all that jazz.

"Bless your heart, Jay."


	7. Chapter 7

**A/N:** Definite trigger warning for this chapter! If you want to skip over it, it shouldn't be too hard to pick up with the next one.

/

Never in her life had Emily felt so relieved as she had in the wake of the night she spent with JJ. Her worst fear was becoming nothing but a case study, a collection of sob stories and self-destructive behaviors, a charity case; that JJ retained the ability to laugh and converse with her as normal was more than a relief. It was a blessing. The days following were quiet; any cases the team caught were local and easily worked thought. This was both good and bad.

It was good, of course, for the sake of other people- the lack of serial killers to chase was always a relief- and because it minimized the stress of each team member. It was not so good, however, because this freed her of any obligation to spend any significant amount of time among other people. Emily knew that the more time she spent alone, the more she over-thought. The more she over-thought, the more overwhelmed she felt. And the more overwhelmed she felt, the more likely she was to make… maybe not the best decisions.

She knew these things, and yet she declined invitations to spend time with her team. Each day after work, she returned home, played with her cat, and just _thought_. Thought about everything. She ignored phone calls and text messages, and she did not leave her apartment. Emily Prentiss was not stupid, of course; she was not ignorant, she did not overlook the possibility that JJ might worry. She simply thought she could get away with a few days of solitude before the worrying began… and then "a few days" became an entire week during which Emily never spoke of anything but her work.

Hotch had let her team go home after about eleven o'clock on a Sunday morning. Shortly after she had entered her apartment, there came a phone call that she, sadly, could not ignore: her mother. Emily knew her mother; if she didn't answer now, the phone would continue ringing and ringing, a new call beginning immediately after the last one ended. With a deep breath, she answered the call: "Hello, Mom."

"Emily! So your phone _does_ work."

"Right, I've been really busy, I'm sorry…"

"Oh, that's quite alright, dear. Now, I'm having a dinner party this coming Friday evening. _Everyone_ will be there, and of course that should include you. I expect to see you at the house by five o'clock, will you be there?"

"... Yes, Mother, five o'clock sharp."

"Alright. Goodbye, Emily."

Emily waited until she heard the dial tone signifying that her mother had hung up the phone, and immediately began to shake. _Fuck!_ Dinner parties with her mother never ended well. _Nothing_ with her mother ever ended well. It was always the same interrogation, the same sly comment about Emily being single, Emily having 'forgotten her manners,' Emily never calling her mother… And the disappointed looks from her mother that surely derived from things neither would dare speak of.

Emily pushed her hair back, rubbed her forehead, closed her eyes tight. She tried to steady her breathing, slow her heart rate, not panic… to no avail. She paced her apartment, reminders of every past conversation with her mother gone awry flashing through her head- pre-abortion, post-abortion, the first time her mother found her cutting, her first girlfriend, her brief stint with drinking and drug use, _God!_ Was there nothing she had ever done right? How many mistakes could one person possibly make in one lifetime? _Fuck! God help me_ , thought Emily, dropping to her knees. Part of her considered praying; most of her felt any faith she once had died long ago.

Then everything felt blurry, she couldn't breathe, and her thoughts never strayed from the line of _No, you can't do anything bad, you can't, that's a bad idea, wrong, don't do that…_ and then her mind went silent. Her mind went completely silent, playing nothing but television static and white noise, as she retreated to her bathroom, sought out her stash of sharp objects… not a single thought entered her mind until she was sitting on the bathroom floor with a towel pressed to new cuts, and she heard the apartment door close.

"Em?" came JJ's voice, dripping with concern. "Em, I called you three times, and I knocked… I'm sorry, your door was unlocked, and… Em? Where are you? Em…" JJ's voice grew nearer. _No. No, she can't see me like this, no!_ Emily tried to make herself move, tried to find a way to hide what she'd done, but she was frozen. "Em, where- oh. _Oh_."

A humiliated Emily lifted her head to find JJ, one hand gripping the door frame and one hand covering her mouth. "Oh, Emily…"

"Jay, it's not- I know this looks bad, but it's… I…" Emily wanted to explain herself, to convince JJ there wasn't a problem, but there were simply no words. There was no way to explain her way out of that situation. Emily had nothing to say; JJ had nothing to say. The blonde took a step into the bathroom, and Emily pulled her knees close to her chest. JJ took another step, and knelt down by Emily's side.

"Em," she whispered, barely more than a breath, "Em, can I… can I see?"

"What? No!" demanded Emily. "Why?!"

"I need to make sure you don't need stitches, okay? Shh, it's okay."

A tear fell from Emily's face, and another, until she was openly crying- breaking the rule she'd held for herself against ever crying in front of other people. She buried her head in JJ's shoulder. "I'm- I'm- I'm so sorry, Jennifer, I didn't want to…"

"Shh. Em, you don't need to be sorry. You really don't." JJ put an arm around the still-shaking Emily. "Em, I'm not upset with you. Hey, look at me," said she, and remained silent until Emily lifted her head. JJ wiped a tear from Emily's cheek. "I am not upset with you."

Emily nodded, and sat up straighter. JJ gently took Emily's arm and unfolded the towel. She bit her tongue to keep from inhaling sharply. JJ was no medical professional; she didn't know for certain whether or not Emily needed professional medical attention. But there was no chance Emily would go to the hospital anyway, was there? Noticing the first-aid kit on the floor, she set to work bandaging Emily's arm. "Can you tell me what happened, Emily?"

"Um," Emily bit her lip, wincing a bit as JJ cleaned the cuts and applied gauze, "nothing, really."

"You don't do _this_ for nothing, Emily. I know it's hard for you to talk about this, but… please. Please." Had JJ not sounded so broken with that final plea, Emily likely would have remained stone-cold and stoic, staring straight down and saying nothing. But JJ had such an expressive voice, and such emotive doe eyes, that Emily felt almost cruel shutting her out.

"My mother called."

"And said…?"

"I have been… _ordered_ to attend her _dinner party_ this Friday." Emily emphasized the words 'dinner party' with heavy sarcasm and a classically angsty eye-roll. "Um… imagine being locked in a room with everything you've ever done wrong, and every way in which you have ever felt inadequate. And then multiply that by four or five, because let's be real, I'm a wreck."

JJ started to argue, but Emily held her hand up. JJ paused, deliberating on what to say next- Emily clearly was not willing to be told that she was not, in fact, a wreck, so she rephrased. "How are you a wreck, Em? How are you inadequate?"

Emily laughed. "How much time do you have?"


	8. Chapter 8

"How much time do you have?"

JJ smiled, and, despite her fear of sounding overly cheesy, responded, "All the time in the world."

So the two rose from the bathroom floor, and JJ headed for the kitchen to make tea- she and Emily both preferred coffee, but she also knew that Emily always kept some sort of tea in the apartment and felt something more soothing might be more appropriate for the moment- and Emily took a few minutes to clean up her mess, to throw the towel in the washing machine and put on a loose-fitting sweater. When they reconvened on the couch, Emily still sat quietly until JJ moved closer and took hold of her hand. "Well?"

Emily took a long sip of tea as a way of stalling, tried to organize her thoughts. "You realize, Miss Jareau, that you are about to have a good two decades of inadequacy dumped upon your head, yes? And a whole awful lot of things I've never said aloud?"

JJ squeezed Emily's hand. "Yeah, Em, but you aren't 'dumping' anything on me. It's not a burden. You know that, right? You're not a burden."

Emily swallowed hard, trying to not let the phrase 'you're not a burden' affect her so much. "Alright… um, I'm not sure where to start. And I don't know what's relevant. So… bear with me. I think… I think you know by now that my mother is an intense person. Everything always has to be perfect. That was always the case, but her expectations for me were raised when my father left. I had to compensate for how poorly his leaving looked. I was about thirteen then, which just so happens to be when most adolescents gain a bit of a rebellious streak. I started acting out just a little- I didn't want to go to formal events, I went out with my friends and didn't tell my mother where I was going. Nothing really _bad_ , you know, just enough to show her that I wasn't going to be perfect.

"I was fourteen. We were in France then. When you're fourteen, all of your classmates start dating. I was… no exception."

Emily hesitated, and JJ attempted to prompt her. "And, what? Your mom didn't like him?"

"Ahaha, well," Emily responded, looking up to the ceiling as though the right words might lay there, "that was sort of the issue. I was dating a person whom she probably would have loved- well-behaved, bright, from an affluent family- had it not been for one detail. Ah, her name was Nathalie." Emily paused, surveying JJ's face for a reaction. A flash of something unreadable crossed her blue eyes, an emotion which Emily couldn't name but which was clearly very strong, and then she nodded.

"You said, when you were fifteen, you tried to _make_ yourself like that boy. That was because…?" JJ sought out eye contact, which Emily persistently avoided.

"Yeah. So, um. Among the only perks of being a teenager in the closet is that your girlfriend can spend the night without raising suspicion. No, don't smirk like that, we were both impeccably well behaved! Mostly. Aha, I mean, we were watching a movie in my living room late at night, and my mother walked in to tell us to turn the volume down, um, just in time to see me kiss her. So. That caused some problems." There was a long pause during which Emily couldn't decide how to continue her tale, and JJ couldn't decide how to respond. JJ opened her mouth, preparing to speak, and Emily, too afraid to hear her response, rushed to continue her story.

"I don't know if my mother was bothered on a religious or moral level. That didn't really matter, because the point was that if I was ever outed publicly, it would reflect poorly on her and her social status. She let Nathalie stay until the following morning, and made her promise never to tell anybody about me. After Nathalie went home, I never saw her again. That was strike one."

Emily was shaking, visibly anxious. JJ interrupted, "Hold on. Em, why are you so scared to tell me this?" JJ was unsure of how to described how this bothered her. She wasn't _offended_ , per se, but she cared for Emily so much and it was a little disheartening to realize just how uncomfortable Emily was talking about her life. She didn't want to avoid make this about her; she just wanted to be able to be supportive.

"Oh, Jen, please don't take it personally. I swear, if I trusted anybody wholeheartedly, it would be you. You… you mean a lot to me, Jennifer."

JJ realized that Emily had been using her full name a lot lately. She also realized that she hadn't corrected it- that it hadn't felt foreign or too formal or condescending like it did coming from anybody else. She cringed when even her parents used 'Jennifer'- to them, she was 'Jen.' So deep in thought was JJ about this that she hadn't any idea how much time passed before Emily took the silence as a sign to continue her story.

"Um, of course, fourteen-year-old, rebellious Emily Prentiss in the early stages of that horrible goth phase was not going to take her mother's banishment of the person she was closest to- her childhood best friend turned first love- with a grain of salt. I had some, um, substance abuse issues for a little while. First I was just drinking, and then I sort of started taking whatever pills I could get. I mean everything from Xanax to Adderall to fucking ecstasy... God, Jayj, I was really a mess. I was… promiscuous, seldom sober, getting into arguments with my mother so frequently I think we forgot how to speak at a normal volume. And then there came that night with the boy, and I thought maybe, just maybe, sleeping with him would at least fix one of my shortcomings, but… as we now know, that didn't work out. I only felt disgusted with myself. Ha.

"It isn't like my mother didn't know what was going on. It wasn't hard to tell when I was on drugs, I'm sure she could hear the... girls... sneaking in through my window at night. That party was the end of it all. She didn't even have to try to punish me. I felt like such a fucking trainwreck that I just shut down on my own. Then she found out that I was pregnant, and she stopped speaking to me; then I had an abortion, and that didn't fix anything. My point with all of that is, um, the substance abuse was strike two, the promiscuity was strike three, and the abortion meant game over.

"That's when I started, um, self-harming. It was the first time since Nathalie that I'd done something wrong without any trace of anger. I wasn't angry. I mean, I suppose I was angry with myself… but it was a horrible cure-all. It was punishment, it was an adrenaline rush, it stilled the panic, and it was, unlike other self-destructive issues, something I could at least pretend to have control over… that's not the point. I'm sorry. It was quiet method of self-destruction and it let me get the rest of my life together. I could get through my social obligations, I could focus on my schoolwork well enough. I got into Yale, I redeemed a fragment of my dignity."

Emily's speech had become automatic, almost robotic. Without thinking about it, JJ lifted Emily's hand to her lips and kissed the back of it. "Hey. I'm here." Emily seemed so out of touch of the moment, so lost in her own head, that JJ wanted to maintain the thread tying the two together, to remind Emily that she wasn't alone.

"My mother didn't know about the self-harming for years. I was careful. But when she did find out… she was so disappointed, Jayj. It was like, she knew her daughter couldn't function in society, but now she couldn't even function in harmony with her own _body_ , and of course nobody could find out about that. There were only a few scars on my arm at the time, and they'd faded by the last time I saw her… if I show up to my mother's house, which she keeps far too warm for the liking of nearly any warm-blooded creature, in long sleeves… she's going to know, Jayj. She'll know, and she won't be shy about it. I can't have that conversation with her, I really can't."

JJ lifted Emily's arm and placed it across her own shoulders, curling up into her companion's side. "Well… what if I went with you?"

"You'd really do that? Do you realize what you'd be getting into?"

"I don't care, Em. If you need me, I'm there."


	9. Chapter 9

b **A/N:** Preparation for the grand dinner party, because really, would it be a Jemily fic if there wasn't an encounter with Ambassador Prentiss? Probably not. Who can say? _Anyway,_ thanks again to everybody reading & reviewing. I really appreciate it xo

/

Friday approached rapidly, and both Emily and JJ spent the week dwelling on their anxiety. Emily was, of course, utterly panicked; JJ grappled with the typical nervousness of someone about to enter an unfamiliar situation which was bound to be unpleasant. JJ showed up at Emily's apartment early that afternoon; their plan had been to meet up early to sort of psych themselves up for the event. It was around one o'clock when Emily heard the knock on her door. She had gotten out of the shower only minutes before and was in the process of getting ready; she opened the door in a tank top and flannel pajama bottoms, her hair a soaking mess and makeup.

JJ couldn't stop the grin from spreading across her face. There was something about the rawness of Emily's appearance that felt… almost _intimate_. She knew Emily wouldn't ever let anybody see her in such a state of disarray, and it was nice to think that she was more comfortable with JJ. The blonde blinked and swallowed hard, making a strong effort not to stare, though she could not help but note that Emily looked, as her immediate thought in response to the sight put it, _ridiculously beautiful_.

The feeling was quite mutual. Emily opened the door to see JJ in a simple navy dress and white cardigan, light makeup, her in loose curls- nothing too formal- and quite literally had her breath taken away. She, too, stared for a moment before regaining her composure and inviting JJ in.

"Thank God you're here, Jayj," said Emily, sounding utterly exasperated. "I have _nothing_ to wear." She was hardly exaggerating- pre-shower, Emily had scoured her closet attempting to find something perfect, and had come up empty; clothes were strewn about her bedroom in complete chaos. Emily took JJ's hand and ran with her into the bedroom, wordlessly gesturing to the mess, eyes wide and clearly distressed.

JJ laughed. "Alright, well, you said that she keeps the house very warm, right? But you need to wear long sleeves. We don't need you to overheat, so let's start there." She sifted through the mess while Emily searched the clothes remaining in her closet. Every now and again, JJ would hold up a blouse or sweater, which Emily would inevitably deny. They were always too casual, too formal, too low-cut, too this, too that.

"Okay, Em, you're never going to find anything if you're going to be that picky. Go find something else to do; I'm picking something out for you."

"But Jayj-"

" _Go_."

Emily begrudgingly grabbed her makeup bag and retreated to the bathroom to apply that, and elected to leave her hair down. Fifteen minutes later, JJ shouted, "Alright, come back, Em!"

She had picked out a deep red blouse, long-sleeved and made of thin material, with a black cardigan of light cotton, also long-sleeved. This she paired with a knee-length black skirt, black stockings, and abracadabra, an outfit that Emily's mother surely couldn't pick on. The combination seemed to simple that Emily was unsure if she truly hadn't thought of it before, or if she had and it only seemed appropriate now because JJ had chosen it.

JJ did not leave the room when Emily changed. She sat on the bed and glanced around, taking in the appearance of the bedroom and pretending that her eyes didn't flicker to Emily every now and again. Both women thought this inconsequential, unimportant, not worth noting- but JJ regretted her decision to stay as the butterflies in her stomach that she'd never admit to having turned into more of a nervous response. Emily had alluded to the fact that there might be scars elsewhere on her body, but JJ never thought there would be so _many_. Perhaps that was foolish- after all, Emily _had_ been struggling with self-harm for years. She looked down to her lap then, a subtle gesture that was not lost on Emily.

"I'm sorry, Jayj."

"Sorry?"

"I, ah, probably shouldn't have made you see the scars." Emily crossed the room to the mirror, ensuring that her shirt was perfectly tucked in, without a single wrinkle. She tried to keep going with her routine, tried to keep getting ready, to prevent the atmosphere from growing too serious. She struggled with the clasp of a necklace; JJ rose from her place to help Emily with it.

"You don't ever need to apologize, Emily," she said, standing behind the older woman and pushing her hair to the side. "You have scars. That's okay. You don't need to hide them from me." Admittedly, it pained JJ to see them, and she didn't feel like being so reassuring. She wanted to help, but she couldn't stop thinking of how much it was hurting _her_. JJ thought this selfish, self-indulgent, and would never admit to it out loud, but… sometimes she needed some reassurance, too.

Moving past that train of thought, she clasped the necklace, but remained close behind Emily for a quiet moment or two, her hands hovering just centimeters from the back of Emily's neck. Their eyes met in the mirror, end JJ's face flushed, realizing that the time to step away had passed long ago. She backed up, and Emily spun around, grabbing JJ's hand before the blonde could step too far way.

"Thank you," she whispered, almost inaudibly and clearly feeling awkward about it.

"Don't thank me, Em. Let's just go get lunch or something, alright?"

And so they did. They chose a small café within walking distance of Emily's apartment, and sat in the back corner in the hopes of remaining relatively private. They spoke on a thousand topics- what college had been like for them, anecdotes from childhood, what books and films they liked best. Some of the stories told had been told before, and some were new. As Emily watched JJ speak about how much she loved classic Disney films growing up, face animated and hand gestures enthusiastic, she bit her tongue to keep from smiling too wide. _Stop that, Emily. This is JJ. Stop._

If Emily was to be completely honest with herself, she would have to admit that she'd had a bit of a crush on JJ since joining the BAU. "Crush" sounded so infantile, but she would always refuse to commit to a stronger word, knowing that nothing could ever come of it. Emily was talented in many ways, but being honest with herself was not one of them. So she sat through lunch that day pretending that she was merely grateful to have JJ as a supportive friend.

The pair spoke so extensively at lunch that by the end of their meal, they had only enough time for a walk around town before it was about time to leave. Emily's mother lived a solid two-hour drive away, and they were expected to be there _by_ five o'clock, which Emily insisted meant four-thirty. It was about two o'clock when they left; Emily was too anxious about hitting traffic to leave a minute later. She was so jittery, in fact, that JJ didn't think she was even safe to drive. "Em, why don't you let me drive, okay?"

Part of Emily wanted to put up a fight, to maintain the image of control, but she knew very well that JJ was right. She had too much on her mind to be able to focus on driving. So she climbed into the passenger seat of JJ's car, and off they went. Emily shifted from nervous habit to nervous habit- she twirled her hair, she bit her fingernails and her lips, she checked the mirror every few minutes to ensure that her makeup hadn't smudged. When she began bouncing her legs up and down, JJ reached over and placed a gentle hand on Emily's knee. The warmth startled Emily, but soothed her as soon as the shock of the sudden touch wore off.

"It's going to be okay, Em," JJ attempted to reassure Emily. "I'm going to be with you the whole time." Suddenly JJ felt very self-conscious. How long was an appropriate amount of time to leave your hand on a friend's thigh? Was it strange that she had stopped speaking, but kept her hand there? She was preparing to retract it when Emily placed her own hand over JJ's.

"I know, Jayj."

JJ had no response. She told herself that this intimacy, this deep sense of caring had come into play because she felt protective of Emily, because they had bonded over a secret… but the truth was that over the course of the last few months, she had felt a growing attachment to Emily. She brushed it off as a strengthening friendship, but that didn't really explain how badly she wanted to kiss her friend- _friend, she's your best friend, and your coworker, for God's sake!_ \- did it?


	10. Chapter 10

**A/N:** Honestly writing Emily's mother is a struggle because I 100% believe that she has the best of intentions at heart, and only comes off as so judgmental because she lives in a world where appearances are everything. Still, I know that if I were in Emily's position, I would be constantly hurt by her mother's sort of strict nature (which may come a lot from my speculation; I don't know how strongly this interpretation fits with her depiction on the show). _Anyway,_ thank you all for reading & many many thanks to _elphiemolizbethbau_ for always reviewing, it's so sweet of you to take the time to do that! xo

/

Dinner, as Emily had expected and JJ had feared, was excruciating. Ambassador Prentiss opened the front door herself (a shock to Emily, who was used to housekeepers taking care of such menial tasks as greeting her) as Emily and JJ approached. Instinctively, Emily dropped JJ's hand, effectively abandoning the sole source of comfort she had in the moment. Feeling utterly alone despite the companion at her side and terribly small in the face of her mother, the Great and Terrible Elizabeth Prentiss, she stepped up onto the porch and held her breath.

"Emily! How nice of you to come."

Emily, visibly confused, could manage nothing but, "Um. I did say that I was coming?"

"Well, yes, dear, it's just nice to see you. Ah, the other guests should be arriving soon, why don't you- oh," here she seemed to notice JJ, who had been hiding slightly behind Emily. Through a broad smile that didn't reach her eyes, Ambassador Prentiss added, "Emily, you didn't tell me that you were bringing a guest."

"I'm sorry, there's just always so much extra space and food at these gatherings, I didn't think it would matter."

"Of course it doesn't matter! Any friend of Emily's is a welcome guest here," said the mother, speaking over Emily's shoulder to JJ. "Emily, won't you introduce us?"

"Yes! Yes, right. Mother, this is Jennifer Jareau, communications liaison with the Behavioral Analysis Unit. JJ, this is my mother, Ambassador Elizabeth Prentiss."

"It's so nice to meet you, Ambassador," JJ said, managing to keep her voice steady. She reached out and shook the Ambassador's hand.

"The pleasure is all mine, Ms. Jareau." With that, Elizabeth Prentiss disappeared into the house, presumably for some further preparation, leaving her daughter and guest to their own devices. The pair stood quietly on the porch for a few minutes, both taking in the events thus far and preparing themselves for what might come next, until Emily offered JJ a tour of the house. JJ accepted the invitation gratefully, and so off they went on their small adventure.

Living room, family room (which, to JJ's surprise, were two different things, though they appeared to serve the same purpose), office, library, restrooms, kitchen, dining room. Then up the stairs- master bedroom, three guest rooms (which also seemed unnecessary to JJ, who came from a two-bedroom house), and, the _pièce de résistance_ , Emily's former bedroom. The dark haired woman pushed the door open with a heavy sigh and led her companion inside.

It was entirely impersonal. The walls were a neutral off-white and unadorned with photographs or decorations of any kind, the bedspread was a neutral floral, the desk was empty. Even to Emily, the room looked hollow, almost dead. "To be fair, I don't live here anymore," came Emily's attempt to defend the room. Of course that made logical sense, but JJ's bedroom was still filled with old notebooks, photographs from her childhood, medals from various athletic tournaments… it was a tribute to her youth, whereas Emily's former bedroom served only as a reminder that the past was nothing but the past.

Emily fell back onto her bed, staring up at the ceiling. "It's probably not too late for you to back out," she offered. "I'm stuck here, but you can say you're sick, or you have some kind of family emergency. You can still get out of this. If you want. I wouldn't be upset."

JJ fell onto the bed as well, and turned her head to face Emily. "I am not leaving you, Em."

Perfectly aligned with JJ's quiet "Em" came the harsh voice of Ambassador Prentiss. "Emily! Would you come downstairs for a moment? I need to speak with you."

JJ locked eyes with Emily, inquisitive, unsure if she should follow. "No, Jen, it's okay. You wait here, I'll take care of this." So JJ remained on the bed as Emily ventured downstairs to her possible doom, and the blonde tried to occupy her mind with anything other than curiosities as to what sort of thing Ambassador Prentiss needed to speak about so urgently. She was doing quite well until she heard voices raised slightly- only loud enough to hear an angry "Emily!" and an exasperated "Mother…" not quite loud enough to hear the rest of the conversation. Desperate to help Emily, she tiptoed down the stairs, but stopped when she heard her name.

"So this Jennifer, she's-"

"A coworker, Mother, and a good friend."

"Hm. And I suppose you haven't any friends more… suitable for such an occasion?"

JJ couldn't see the scene unfolding, and that was rather fortunate for her: she surely would have begun crying to see the dejected, miserable look on Emily's face. How, wondered JJ, could a woman so headstrong, so brave, completely fold in the face of her mother? She supposed that took great power on Ambassador Prentiss' part.

"You mean men? I have male friends. But that isn't relevant, because Jennifer isn't here as my date. She is here as a guest."

"Emily…" and here the mother's tone changed completely, from frustration to a sad sort of exasperation. "Emily, I have only ever wanted what was best for you. I only want to protect you..."

Emily sighed heavily. She knew that. A part of growing up, she found, meant realizing that the world did not necessarily exist exactly as she saw it, and that was sort of the problem: she knew that her mother was trying to help, and that made it so hard to hate her for it. But while sympathizing with her mother's point of view kept Emily from hating her mother, it did nothing to stop the anger and the hatred in general from building with every comment that came from her mother. She thus was left with an abundance of loathing and nowhere to turn it but onto herself.

Of course, Emily would never admit to any of that out loud. As had been her default defense mechanism since early adolescence, it was far easier to play the role of the angsty daughter. She gave her mother the best "I know" she could manage while sounding unaffected but not like a totally horrible person, gave her mother a small smile, and remained quiet.

"Alright, Emily. Go fetch your guest; everybody else is arriving."

When JJ heard Emily retreating towards the stairs, she scrambled to silently return to the room and pretend that she hadn't been eavesdropping. It's difficult to hide such things from FBI agents. Emily allowed JJ to return to the bedroom undisturbed, but upon entering the room behind her, sighed and said, "I'm sorry you had to hear that."

JJ froze, her back to Emily. "Hear what?" said she, still pretending that she had done as she was told and stayed put.

"Okay. You didn't hear anything," said Emily, clearly not buying into the blatant lie but unwilling to press JJ about it. "Um, we're expected downstairs now."

Thus ended the most painful part of the dinner. The rest was easier, but not by terribly much; both JJ and Emily could feel the good Ambassador's scrutinizing stare whenever one said a word to the other. Emily had to adjust her sleeves every few minutes, terrified that they might slip; her mother surely must have noticed this. As always, Emily attempted to stay quiet whenever it could be polite to do so; she answered any questions that the guests had about her career, and avoided any about her personal life. Every now and again, JJ's elbow would hit Emily's, or Emily's passing glances at JJ would be extended by a second or six. Both pretended they didn't notice.

The dinner dragged on, and the women at last retreated to JJ's car at about nine at night. Emily sat in the passenger seat once more, her knees pulled up against her chest; JJ could see in her peripheral vision that Emily was scratching her wrists, as she had done earlier. She sensed that calling the woman out on it would only further upset her, so JJ kept the observation to herself. She did, however, venture to say, "Em… would you be okay staying at my place tonight?"

"J-Jay, I can take care of myself. I'm fine."

"I know you can. I know. But I'm, um, a little overwhelmed, you know? I sort of… need you. And you know how easily I worry, so… even though I trust you, I really do, I would just sleep a lot better if you were with me. Is that- is that okay?" JJ had said a thousand times that she hated profilers, but Emily was absolutely right: she may as well have been one. She knew Emily wouldn't stay with her if she felt like a burden; she knew Emily needed to feel needed. She catered to what Emily wanted to hear. Was that wrong? She felt a bit guilty, a bit manipulative, but JJ knew that Emily was extremely distressed, and she didn't know just of how much self-destruction she was capable. She didn't want to find out.

Emily stayed silent for a few long moments, and then a soft "okay."


	11. Chapter 11

They didn't bother dropping by Emily's apartment to pick up a change of clothes; both JJ and Emily were so emotionally exhausted that they elected to head straight for their ultimate destination. Anxiety does that to a person. They stumbled into JJ's apartment just after eleven at night. Without speaking, Emily curled up on JJ's couch while JJ poured two glasses of water. When both were settled on the couch, a few silent moments passed. JJ wanted to console Emily, wanted to remedy any frayed nerves and mend any feelings of brokenheartedness, but where to begin? How was she even to know which part of the dinner party was troubling Emily most? JJ was so used to Emily hiding her feelings, so used to having to decipher codes in order to understand even fragments of the other woman's emotional state, that it caught her far off guard when Emily's soft voice, thick with the tears JJ hadn't realized were shed, broke the silence.

"She hates me. Jennifer, I can't… she hates me."

"Em…" JJ began, but she hadn't the foggiest idea of where to go from there. As much as she wanted to reassure Emily, she didn't have a scrap of proof confirming that love existed between Emily and her mother. She had her suspicions- something about the way Ambassador Prentiss looked at Emily, more with compassion than disappointment- but how was she to convince Emily of that? And Emily would not appreciate being lied to, especially not out of pity. So she bit her tongue, maintained her silence, and simply reached a hand towards Emily's resting form. The dark-haired woman's head was resting on the arm of the sofa opposite JJ, which left JJ to place her hand on Emily's leg.

"Why do you do this, Jayj?"

JJ could not respond immediately; she didn't know what Emily meant. Before she had the chance to ask, Emily continued. "Why do you put up with this- with me? It's not worth the effort. You're a smart woman, Jayj, you should know a lost cause when you see it."

That last statement hit JJ like a freight train. She could not bear to even hear the words 'lost cause' applied to Emily- 'lost cause' meant giving up. Emily could not give up. She couldn't. She couldn't! She pressed her lips into a thin line and waited until she had steadied her breath to speak.

"Emily, after Rosaline died, I fell apart. I was eleven, I was a child, but I just sort of… shut down. My parents had me in grief counseling, and the therapist always asked what I thought should happen next. I was always saying that this wasn't how it was supposed to be, that things should have been different… I think he just wanted me to imagine a future beyond Ros. But all I ever could say was that I thought I should die next. I wasn't going to kill myself, but I just… I saw myself as a lost cause. I didn't eat, I hardly spoke. I wanted everybody to just let me die slowly."

JJ's voice cracked several times throughout the last sentences; when at last a tear fell to stain her dress an even darker blue, she took three grounding breaths. "I got better, slowly. I started living again. I was happy, Em, I learned to be really happy. I never stopped thinking about her, not ever, but I learned to survive without her. But, Em… there are still sometimes days when it's impossible to accept that she's gone. There are still sometimes days when I don't think I can get through another day without her. There are still sometimes days when I look back to eleven year old me, and think that she was a lost cause then, and... that I still am."

Emily rose from her laying position, wiped the tears from her eyes, and took hold of JJ's shoulders. "You can't say that, Jayj, please. You are so strong, you are so brave… this world needs you. You are the farthest thing from a lost cause."

"Em, how do you not understand? That's all I've wanted to say to you. Emily Prentiss- hey, look at me. Look right at me, okay?- you are the bravest person. Not because you compartmentalize, or… I mean, what makes you strong isn't the times you manage to convince everyone that nothing is wrong. What makes you strong is the fact that you're sitting here right now. And you're talking to me."

Emily waited to respond; she hadn't the words. Occasionally she opened her mouth, prepared to speak, only to realize that whatever coherent thought she had formed was long gone already. It had been, what, just over two weeks since she'd first begun talking to JJ about her personal life? And already she had revealed so many things she would never have even dreamed of discussing with another person. What did that say? That JJ was simply that comforting? That she was losing her ability to hold herself together in the presence of other people?

JJ had been chewing on her lip for so long it had become painful. "Emily," she began, and then froze. She knew Emily had a lot going on, and as much as she wanted to be able to make it all go away, she wasn't sure she had that power. Three deep breaths, and then, "Emily? Where- where are you… with all of this? I mean, I love- ah, I want to be here for you. But is it… is it too much? Would you ever, um, consider talking to a professional?"

Silence. JJ counted the seconds: one, two, three, four, five, six, seven. Then Emily rose from her seat, blank-faced, and wandered around the room. She ran her finger along the top of the television, examined the dust, wiped it off on her blouse. She toyed with the snow globes on the top of JJ's bookshelf, examined the titles of the books, and disappeared down the hall. JJ waited a moment, not wanting to seem overprotective (though she surely felt overprotective), and then followed Emily into her bedroom- which, to her brief confusion, was empty. It was a small bedroom, though, with minimal hiding places, and after JJ checked the closet, she lay on the floor and peered under the bed, only to find two bloodshot, brown doe eyes staring back at her.

"Em?"

"Go away," came Emily's childish voice. "I'm mad at you."

JJ understood that she'd said something Emily didn't want to hear, and she'd be lying if she wasn't worried that Emily was genuinely angry. Still, she ventured to gently ask, "If you're so angry, why are you in my bedroom and not on your way home?"

Emily sniffled. "I hate profilers."

Ignoring her go-to defense that she was not, in fact, a profiler, JJ only responded, "Well?"

In response to JJ's prompting, Emily's hand reached out from under the bed and grabbed the hand of the blonde crouching down. "Because I hate what you say, but I still love you."

For a moment, pure sentimental happiness flashed across JJ's face, before being replaced by a teasing grin. "You _loooove_ me?"

Emily grabbed a small stuffed bear which, at some point in time, had fallen off of JJ's bed and hidden under the bed for God knows how long. Holding the bear close, she answered,"Yeah, I love you, you big dumb eight year old."

/

 **A/N:** I know Emily is a total badass and could probably be the world's most terrifying human if she wanted to be, but I'm utterly convinced that she could never be so mad at JJ as to be mean. Thus, I believe she would have to resort to being a petulant child (which I think happens to be quite adorable). Thank you all for reading! I'm still figuring out what comes next- I have a few things I know need to happen, but there's a lot still to figure out. _So,_ if there's anything you really think should happen, feel free to let me know! Also, side note- I never really planned out when this story would take place. Clearly Will has never happened, and I don't think Doyle has either, so either this is taking place in an earlier season or neither Will nor Doyle ever existed to begin with. Take your pick/choose whichever you prefer because at this point I think it's too late to make a solid clarification :~)


	12. Chapter 12

The two women slept soundly through the night, curled up on JJ's bed. JJ never mentioned seeing a professional again, but as they fell asleep, Emily said that she would think about it- that she wasn't agreeing to anything, but that if it would make JJ feel better, she would give it some consideration. JJ drove Emily to work the following day, leaving early to swing by Emily's apartment for a change of clothes.

Between Emily's preoccupation with her own life and JJ's preoccupation with her concern for Emily and the upcoming anniversary of Rosaline's death, neither woman had been spending a particularly significant amount of time with the rest of the team. With a team such as theirs, such privacy and solitude can never last for long: the team was called out to Santa Monica to, as Penelope Garcia put it, "do their Scooby-Doo mystery-solving, crime-fighter magic." She and Derek Morgan, being both extremely perceptive and extremely persistent, took it upon themselves to decipher a secondary mystery while on this case: Garcia referred to their joint mission as "Project Jem," in an attempt to a.) refer to the subjects of their investigation in a subtle way (JJ/Em) and b.) constantly remind Morgan, in case he ever had half a mind to attempt a 'tough love' approach, that JJ and Emily both were precious gems and needed all of their kindness and patience.

Derek's first strategic move was to simply observe the girls on the plane. They sat side-by-side, Emily with a book and JJ with a Rubik's cube borrowed from Reid (no doubt he was watching on, mentally solving the puzzle as JJ mindlessly moved squares this way and that), pretending to be absorbed in their activities but conversing quietly, covertly. From this, he confirmed what he had suspected and what Garcia had claimed to know ("I've told you before, my love, I am the Oracle of All Things Knowable and Unknowable. I know my sweet girls!"): whatever kept JJ and Emily from engaging with the group as per usual was a joint issue, not either woman with her own personal life.

Step two brought Garcia into the picture. Morgan was to convince Emily to join him at the hotel's bar, while Garcia would call JJ- they were certain she would remain in her hotel room- for some 'girl talk.' They arrived in Santa Monica just as the police made a false arrest- they were searching for a killer mimicking the crimes of Ted Bundy, and had brought in essentially the first registered sex offender they came across- and spent the day working through that mess. As Hotch dismissed them for the night, instructing them to rest up and come back with fresh eyes in the morning, Derek caught Emily's arm.

"Slow down, busy girl! Whaddya say you and I go get a drink?"

Emily felt a pang of disappointment- she wanted to return to her hotel room and seek solace in JJ- but she also knew that she had been wrongfully neglecting her friend. Despite the small part of her that drowned in suspicion, she agreed, and followed Derek to the hotel bar. Both sat quietly, sipping their respective beers, for a few moments, before Derek broke the silence.

"Prentiss, is there something going on with you? You've been distant."

"What? I haven't!"

"Hey. I know you're a private person, and I respect that. But you have been distant. You've been quiet. You hardly talk to any of us except about our cases, and we're- I'm worried. If there's something going on, I need you to tell me. I want to help."

The last thing that Emily had ever wanted was to worry her friends. "Look, I… I guess I have been distant, and I'm sorry. I don't mean to worry you; please believe me when I tell you there is nothing that you need to worry about. Things have been a little chaotic lately; I've been trying to… work around some things with my mother. You know we've never been the closest, but that… I'm working on that. And all. I'm okay, see?" Emily flashed her biggest smile to emphasize her point. Lying felt like shit, but what choice did she have?

Derek could only nod. He knew she wasn't telling him everything, but he also knew that pressing her too much would only make her shut him out completely. He had only one question left: "Alright. And where does JJ fit into this?" Emily had no response, which forced Derek to elaborate. "She's been quiet, too, you know. You two talk to each other, and not really to us. I'm glad you have her support, but I just need to know that she's okay, too."

Emily drew in a deep breath and nearly forgot to let it out. "You… would have to talk to JJ if you're worried about her. I can promise you that she's okay, too, but it's not my place to explain it."

Derek, still visibly unsettled but mollified for the time being, set his half-full beer glass down on the bar. "Alright. Thanks for talking to me, Prentiss." Derek dropped a few dollars next to his glass and began to walk away. Emily waited until he had taken a few strides to respond:

"Anytime."

/

As Emily attempted to answer Derek's questions in as comforting a manner as possible, JJ paced their hotel room trying to console the highly concerned Penelope. As the aforementioned gentleman walked his companion to the bar, he sent a text to Garcia letting her know that work was done for the day- it was time for her confrontation. With her infamous impeccable timing, Garcia managed to call JJ just as she closed the hotel room door.

"Garcia? What's up?"

"Sugarplum! Why don't you tell me?"

"Um? I just got back to my hotel room. Not much is going on."

"Really? _Well_ , a little birdy told me you've been acting mighty strange as of late. And by 'a little birdy,' I of course mean my incredible observational skills."

"Garcia, I don't know what you're talking about. Please… explain."

/

 **A/N:** So I think we're basically just working in a world where Doyle never happened and Will, if anything, was a brief relationship. Thanks to everybody reading & reviewing! xo

Garcia's sigh was so heavy that JJ could practically smell the fourth cup of coffee on Garcia's breath. "JJ, you know I would rather be the vague ray of sunshine, but if you must force me to be serious… you've been weird, Jayj, and I'm worried. You don't talk to me, or… really anyone except Emily. Which is great that you have her! But you're never this secluded, you know? And I know I'm not a profiler or anything, but you seem… sad. And scared. And… I don't know, chickadee, your smile is different. Like there's more going on behind it. Does that make sense?"

JJ wanted to chuckle at Garcia's chaos- it always was so charming- but she felt horrible for worrying such a bright spirit. "Garcia, I… um, you know my sister? Rosaline? Um, today is the twenty-sixth of January, right? Which means that the anniversary of her… death… is in six days." It was half-true- JJ was still heavily grieving the loss of her sister, and the impending anniversary was no doubt a large part of why she seemed off to the rest of the team. She wanted to tell Garcia about Emily, too, wanted some advice as to what to do next, but she felt an obligation to hold some faith in her dark-haired friend. Emily had promised that she could take care of herself; JJ felt she deserved a chance to prove that.

"Oh… oh Jayj. I'm so sorry, I can't believe I didn't- I should have known, wow, I-"

"Penelope, slow down. Pen. Garcia!" JJ fought through Garcia's rambling. "There is no reason you should have known. I'm so sorry for worrying you, but you know this isn't the sort of thing I want to discuss with six other people, you understand? But Emily has been helping me. I'm okay, I really am."

Both a strength and a fault of Garcia's was her unshakable faith in her friends. Where Derek maintained strong suspicions about Emily's wellbeing, Garcia trusted JJ to tell her the truth, and thus had no strong desire to push for more detail. She sent Derek a quick text saying that her talk with JJ had gone well and they would speak back in Quantico, and that was the end of day one of Project Jem.


	13. Chapter 13

Emily made her way back to the hotel room just as JJ was hanging up the phone. Wordless, she fell onto the bed JJ had already claimed as her own. Emily knew full well of this- JJ, for reasons that remained unexplained, always took the bed closer to the door. Always. Emily did not stop to analyze this action- she'd felt analyzed enough by Derek; JJ figured it was either because she hadn't the energy to walk the extra four feet to her own bed, or because she wanted JJ to join her. As JJ was wracked with guilt from her conversation with Penelope and quite needed consoling, she perched herself on the edge of the bed, reached over, and brushed a few strands of hair out of Emily's eyes. Both remained quiet; both were simultaneously in need of comfort and driven by a need to comfort the other. Emily spoke first.

"Jennifer… how are you? I mean, really, how are you?" Unsure if JJ's hesitance to respond derived from consideration of the right words or because she didn't want to answer the question, Emily added, "I mean, I don't want to push you, but… we've been talking about me a lot, and I know that's really hard for you, especially considering… it's almost the fourth. So… how are you?"

JJ looked down to see Emily's eyes watering, searching, overwhelmed. "I don't like talking about it, Em, but… I also want to. I'm not going to lie to you, Emily, this isn't easy. I'm… scared. I'm terrified, actually. I know you aren't Ros, but every time I think about losing her, I think…".

Emily nodded, contemplative. "Jayj, I'm not going anywhere. Please, keep talking to me. Please."

Much like Emily had found herself so quickly spilling her guts to JJ, the blonde now found herself opening up doors she'd closed long ago, finding some strange courage when Emily took her hand. "I… was the one who found her." Long pause during which Emily didn't see it fit to interrupt. "It was after school one day. Our father was at work, and our mother was visiting her parents in the next town over. I was supposed to be at a soccer game, but I felt sick... I had a bad feeling, Em. I didn't understand it then, but I just didn't like the idea of Ros being alone for too long. Not with how she'd been acting… not after she'd given me her necklace. So I walked home from school, and she was just… there. In the bathtub. I tried, Em, I really tried to help, I called an ambulance, but… it's just that, if I had just been a few minutes earlier, Em. If I had gone straight home, not even stuck around for the start of the game, I could have…"

"Jennifer… this was in no way your fault."

"How do you know, Emily? How do you know that? If I had been home, she wouldn't have-"

"Jennifer, your sister… she wasn't… well. You were a child; there's no way you could have known… I am so sorry, Jayj, I know you wish someone had saved her. I wish someone had, too. But nobody could have expected you… you didn't fail her. You didn't."

When JJ remained quiet save for a few shaky breaths, Emily gently tugged on JJ's arm until the blonde lay down next to her. She turned onto her side and rested her hand on JJ's cheek. "I didn't know your sister, Jay, but I know you. I know that you want to save everybody. That's admirable, Jayj, but… sometimes, no matter what you do- no matter how loving you are and how much someone loves you- it just can't make everything go away. And, JJ, if eleven year old you was half as incredible as you are now, then I can promise you that your sister knew you loved her. If nothing else… remember that. It isn't fair. I know it isn't fair. But…"

"I know." Heavy sigh, and an evident decision to abruptly switch topics. "Hey, ah, Garcia called me today. Worried. Apparently I haven't been acting like myself."

"No kidding? Morgan sort of… confronted me today, too. Definitely concerned. What did you say to Garcia?" There was an obvious edge of fear in Emily's voice which led JJ to lay a hand over Emily's, still resting on her cheek.

"I told her it was nearly Ros', um. Anniversary? There's no good way to phrase that. Hey, deep breaths, okay? I didn't tell her about… but I still. I still think, um. I mean, you know I am technically supposed to report this kind of thing to Hotch, right?"

Emily smiled so wide her eyes crinkled and her cheeks hurt. The smile was mostly forced- mostly out of a desperate desire to lighten the situation- but it was based in a genuine gratitude for both JJ's support and discretion. "Yes, lovebug, and I _very much_ appreciate you keeping quiet!"

"You sound like Garcia," JJ deadpanned, although behind her blank expression she was rather amused. She loved seeing this side of Emily- this goofy side that reminded JJ that all was not entirely dismal. She almost never revealed this side of herself, and when she did, it was almost always in the face of sheer stress- but it was so nice to see, anyway, and JJ wanted to make it last. She knew Emily would JJ's lack of reaction as a challenge, a provocation- as predicted, Emily fell seamlessly into her overly excited character and quickly sat up on her knees, leaning over JJ so that a curtain of dark hair fell over the blonde's face.

"Aw, sweetheart! I can't _possibly_ be Garcia! If I were, I'd have to be hitting on Morgan just now instead of impressing you with my sheer tragic beauty!" Emily's voice was obviously dripping with sarcasm; JJ was curious to see where Emily was going with her speech, but couldn't stop herself from laughing quietly and adding under her breath:

"I'm not sure about tragic, but beautiful…"

Emily quit her bouncing around and paused, unusually coy for the typically bold woman. "Yeah?"

JJ, fearing she had made the moment too serious once more (albeit in a completely different way), winked and attempted her best Morgan voice. "You know it, _babygirl_."

"Baby- oh my god, Jayj!" Emily burst out laughing, falling back down into a laying position. "Bless your heart, JJ, just…"

The laughter didn't die down for a solid five minutes, during which time the two went back and forth, alternating between impressions of Morgan and Garcia and dissolving into impressions of their entire team by the end. Tired out from the laughter, both women curled up- uncomfortably crowded on one twin-sized bed- and, physically exhausted but still mentally wide awake, JJ avoided eye contact with Emily and added:

"I mean it, though, Em. I do."

There was no need for clarification.

 **A/N:** Sorry for the delay on this chapter! I think Emily is so often portrayed as being completely serious, but I think she would eventually have to completely lose that seriousness altogether (this may be partly because I've spent so much time today going through Paget Brewster's Twitter...) so things got a little cutesy, which I think was much needed considering how serious things have been. Thanks for reading! xoxo


	14. Chapter 14

Much to Penelope Garcia's disappointment, progress on Project Jem had to be postponed until the team was back in Virginia. As was always the case with her miracle team, Garcia's friends caught the unsub just in the nick of time- hardly two days later, actually, even saving the life of his would-be victim; Garcia targeted Morgan the moment he stepped off of the jet, pulling him to the corner and hoping nobody would ask why (although, really, what were the odds? JJ and Emily were clearly preoccupied with each other; Reid had his nose stuck in the book he'd been reading on the plane; Hotch and Rossi may have wondered at Garcia's obvious urgency, but neither man really understood her enthusiasm anyway and would only chalk it up to her excitable personality). As soon as the team was out of earshot, Garcia began her interrogation.

"My chocolate Adonis, you failed to update me on Project Jem after day one! What happened?"

Morgan rolled his eyes, chuckling. "First of all, pretty woman, reusing clever nicknames should be against the rules. Second of all, the case got chaotic. I didn't have any time alone with either of them." Just as Garcia's shoulders slumped and her face curled into a (rather adorable) pout, Morgan added his good news: "But on the plane, they were speaking not-so-discretely about Prentiss going over to JJ's place tonight to pick some things up, and she was gonna stay a while."

Garcia's eyes grew wide; she clapped her hands and began muttering plans to herself: she was going to stop by JJ's apartment that evening to suggest they watch a movie and would, inevitably, catch Emily there, too. Garcia knew, despite the fact that she spent her days in front of computer screens rather than around real people and that she certainly wasn't trained to observe behavior like her colleagues, that she could tell when two 'friends' were more than they let on. Yes, she was going to find absolute proof, if for no other reason than for her personal satisfaction.

/

That evening, as planned, Garcia skipped merrily up to JJ's door. Had she been walking more discretely, she might have walked in on Emily with her sweater sleeves pushed up, listening to JJ's monologue of "it's been, what, a week and a half? A very stressful week and a half, Em, and you've kept yourself safe. I'm so, _so_ proud of you." But Garcia was anything but subtle, and the moment Emily heard footsteps outside of the door, she hushed JJ and pulled her sleeves down over her hands. She did not, however, move from her position, curled up into JJ's side.

Garcia threw the door open unannounced and tried to not be obvious as she absorbed the scene before her: two half-drunk cups of coffee, Emily's head on JJ's shoulder, knees curled beneath her, and a blanket thrown over the two of them. It was sweet, it was comfortable, and while Garcia wanted to celebrate- as she had quickly come to the conclusion that Emily and JJ were, in fact, a couple (a suspicion which she had held in the back of her mind for some time which had been strengthened and cemented when Morgan mentioned their planned evening rendez-vous)- but feared frightening her friends into silence.

"Hey, girlies!"

"Garcia, I- I mean, not that it isn't great to see you, but… what are you doing here?" JJ stumbled to find a way to convey her surprise without making her friend seem unwelcome.

"I texted you that I was going to come over? That my neighbor had his theatre troupe over and it was far too loud for my liking?" Garcia furrowed her brow, though she was, of course, lying. No such theatre troupe existed, and no such text had ever been sent, but she didn't want to come off as presumptuous or like she had invited herself over (which she had, but that was neither here nor there). Thankfully for Garcia, JJ had been complaining about her shitty cell service for some time, assumed the text had gotten lost in the virtual void, and moved along.

"Oh. Okay. Well, come in, then! Em and I were- we were just going to watch a movie. Any suggestions?"

Garcia sat down on the end of the couch opposite JJ and Emily and smiled wide. She insisted she'd watch anything they wanted to, and as soon as the other two were absorbed in the movie, she sent a text to Derek full of exclamation points and heart emojis that proclaimed the perceived relationship of her two friends.

/

After the film ended, Emily went home- partly eager to see her cat again, whom she feared would grow more attached to the catsitter who lived next door than he was to her, and partly because she'd hardly had a moment's privacy in… ages. Garcia, seeing that her spy duties were fulfilled and wanting to avoid overstaying her surprise welcome, also left, and JJ promptly fell asleep.

Emily was not quite so lucky. Her head, as she drove home, was filled with static, white noise. The fact that she couldn't figure out what was wrong only worsened the buzzing, the confusion, the sense of being completely and utterly overwhelmed. Upon returning home, she paced the apartment, watching the TV for a few minutes at a time and then flicking it off because the noise distracted her from… from what? From trying to think, and failing miserably? She would inevitably turn it on again in the hopes of finding a distraction, and then back off, and then on, and off.

Emily's solution to this was a glass of wine to at least blur the sharp edges of incomprehensible thoughts. Perhaps twenty minutes later, another glass was in order. An hour after that, one more. She continued this way until seven in the morning, the time between drinks always increasing, until she felt an unbearable urge to scream welling up inside of her. _What is the matter with you?_ she mentally shouted at herself, _There is nothing wrong! You don't even know what's overwhelming you! You don't even know what's upsetting you, so calm down and go to work!_

But to even begin the process of showering, dressing, and driving to work was far too much for Emily to handle. She took a swig of vodka from the bottle, a quiet thought in the back of her head insisting that this was far too reminiscent of her young adulthood to be safe; another swig to quiet that voice. Added to that was sleep deprivation and the residual effects of the wine she'd stopped drinking… how long ago? Before sunrise, she was sure of that. Together, the numbing effects became more than Emily could handle, and she seemed to move on autopilot, watching her hands move but not recognizing them as her own, as she pulled blades from the bathroom cabinet.

 **A/N:** So things are getting a little serious but I promise, we'll eventually get to a much cutesier point. Thank you all for reading, you wonderful darlings xo


	15. Chapter 15

At about seven in the morning on February first, JJ sat in the bullpen with Reid and Morgan, glancing around anxiously in anticipation of Emily's arrival. Hotch had told them they needed to meet to discuss a case immediately, and JJ had convinced him to give Emily ten minutes to show up. That was eleven minutes ago. Emily wasn't answering her cell phone. This feeling was much too like what she had felt the day she found Ros; pale-faced and slightly shaking, JJ found her way to Hotch's office and asked if she could go see if Emily was alright. Normally, Hotch's response would have been that Emily could take care of herself and it was her own responsibility to come to work, but JJ was so visibly shaken that he allowed it.

JJ certainly broke the speed limit on the way to Emily's and bolted up the stairs. She knocked on the door gently at first, hoping that Emily was simply running late, but grew more and more frantic by the moment until she was pounding on the door, shouting, "Emily! Em, please let me in, Emily? Em!"

The door next door opened. A young woman held Sergio in her arms. "Are you looking for Emily Prentiss?"

"Yes, yes, I am, I am, where is she?"

"Oh… oh wow. An ambulance took her away… maybe half an hour ago? I don't know what happened…"

Though JJ was typically rather polite, she left this neighbor girl without so much as a nod; she sprinted to her car and sped to the hospital, where she frantically pleaded with the woman at the front desk to see Emily.

"I'm sorry, our guest visiting hours aren't for a few hours; we can only let you in if you're family."

"I'm- I'm the closest thing to family she has. Please, I just need to see her. I just need to know what happened. What happened?"

The front desk woman looked to be in serious contemplation. Surely she had somebody in her life whom she'd simply _need_ to see if she were in JJ's shoes? Eventually, she let out a heavy sigh. God bless that highly sympathetic hospital employee- she motioned for JJ to lean in close and quietly said, "She's on the third floor, room 326. If anybody asks, you're her sister."

JJ stuttered while trying to thank the woman for a few moments before regaining her dedication to finding Emily. Walking as fast as she could without being reprimanded ("No running in the hospital!" had been shouted at her in the past when her colleagues were wounded), she burst into room 326 to find Emily curled up on the bed, her left arm bandaged. The sight before JJ was her worst fear realized: Emily sat in a hospital bed, in a hospital gown, with her hair in a sloppy ponytail and with with bags under her eyes. She stared out the window to her right, knees held against her chest- one arm bandaged. Emily didn't need to turn around to know who had approached; in a voice so soft that JJ almost didn't understand it, she said, "I'm so sorry, Jennifer. I'm so… I'm so sorry."

JJ wanted to respond, but no words would come. She slowly approached the bed, noticing with an internal cringe the IV in Emily's arm, and sat down at the edge, breathing deeply and taking in the sight. In response to JJ's silence, Emily attempted to reassure her, though she knew this was a sight she could not explain away with sarcasm and self-deprecating humor:

"It was an accident. I wasn't trying to… you know, I wasn't."

"What happened, Emily?" came JJ's timid voice, strained in an attempt to sound neither broken-hearted nor accusatory. Emily's bandaged arm- the one not restricted by the IV- came up as she pinched the bridge of her nose and tried to choose her words carefully. This, she knew, was harder on JJ than it was on herself, and she needed to do everything possible to keep things from getting worse.

"I'm, um, not really sure _why_. I just… everything was overwhelming, you know? Confusing, and distant. I resorted to the only thing that's ever worked before. God, JJ, I'm so sorry! I didn't realize how… I didn't realize that I wasn't in control. Um, and I sort of, ah, went too deep. I called an ambulance, they stitched me up, and now… now they're not letting me go home. Um, apparently I was mumbling when I got here, and they're worried… they're keeping me on a seventy-two hour observational hold. But I'm so not in danger, JJ, I swear, this was all a mistake…"

Just as Emily trailed off to hide the fact that she was on the verge of tears, a doctor entered to check on Emily. Still under the ruse of sisterhood, JJ pulled him to the side and demanded to know what happened- Emily's story was all well and good, but there were clearly missing details, and JJ needed to know from an unbiased source.

"I wish that I could be more reassuring, but it wasn't good. She called an ambulance herself- that was a good sign- but she'd split an artery, and she lost a lot of blood. Shock from that combined with the alcohol made her physically ill-"

Here JJ interrupted him. "Alcohol?"

"Yes, from her report, it sounds like she drank an awful lot of wine and vodka. When she was brought in, she was not only bleeding profusely, but also vomiting a fair amount. By the time we got her to this room, she was severely dehydrated, hence the IV. I wasn't there when she first came in, but nurses and the EMTs say that she was incoherent, going on about abortion one minute and fate the next and disappointing someone after that. The resident psychiatrist has been checking in on her; his professional opinion is that, while she seems calm, she is also a definite risk to herself. We're keeping her on a seventy-two hour hold for observation, and we'll reevaluate when that time is up."

Blank faced, JJ shook the doctor's hand. "Thank you, sir." JJ returned to Emily's bed and, almost instantly, her phone began vibrating.

"It's Hotch," said JJ, taking Emily's hand. "You know I have to tell him where you are."

Emily let out a heavy sigh. She'd fucked up, she knew, and she hated it, but she couldn't blame JJ for being responsible about it. "Yeah, Jayj, I know. It's okay."

JJ nodded and hurried to answer the phone before Hotch was sent to voicemail. "Hey, Hotch."

"Where are you?"

"I'm, ah, I'm in the hospital with Emily. She… I'd rather explain in person, but I really don't want to leave her. Emily was admitted this morning with, um, severe dehydration and a split artery. Um, self-inflicted."

Hotch's breathing was audible on the line. He never was one to show too much emotion, but what was he supposed to do in this situation? Most of him- the protective part, the part that wanted to help people, and, most of all, the part that had come to care about Emily like family- wanted to haul ass to the hospital immediately. The rest of him knew that he and his team had a job to do, and neither he nor they could afford to be distracted. "I see. We're going to have to talk about this, but now may not be the time. You stay with her today; the rest of us can handle the case on our own."

"Hotch, are you sure? I can-"

"No, JJ. You stay."

"Thank you, sir."

End phone call.

Emily's eyes welled up with tears and a combination of shame and expectation. "Well?"

"Well. It sounds like he wants to talk to me later, and I'm sure he'll want to speak to you, as well… but the rest of the team is taking over a local case today, and I'm staying here with you… if that's okay?"

"Yeah. That would… I'd like that."

And so she did. The two watched dull game shows on the small television in the corner of the room until evening, at which point Emily was deemed medically stable and an observation room in Crisis Intervention was at last open. JJ was sent home with a parting hug and a gentle, "Be brave, Em. You can do this."

 **A/N:** I don't actually know for sure how the hospital process would go for Emily, being an adult responsible for her own healthcare. I'm doing the best I can basing it off of ER visits as a teenager which almost never required time in a medical ward and which certainly never involved any non-parental visitors, so forgive me for any inaccuracies!


	16. Chapter 16

Seventy-two hours. That's four thousand, three hundred and twenty minutes. That's two hundred and fifty nine thousand, two hundred seconds. And Emily was counting down every last one of them. She didn't know what, exactly, to expect from such a thing- from this middle-ground, purgatory-esque lockdown as she awaited judgment as to whether or not she would be properly admitted to the psychiatric ward. They referred to it as 'observation,' which unnerved Emily to her very core. What did they expect to observe? They were keeping her in a near-empty room, with only a wheeled hospital bed and a small table, and gave her no way to occupy herself other than the book she'd persuaded them to allow JJ to bring to her. There was nothing for her to do, and thus nothing for them to observe.

Did they expect a show? Did they expect her to fall apart, beg them to let her go? She wouldn't dare give them the satisfaction. Stubborn Emily sat, stoic, reading her book (which came from JJ's bookshelf, not her own- _Jane Eyre_ \- and she quite appreciated having that connection to her friend). Emily had never considered herself a particularly fast reader, especially not after having met the Brilliant Dr. Reid, but she finished the book in… some amount of time, immeasurable as there was no clock in the room, and immediately flipped back to the start and read it again.

Every now and again, Emily would glance out the window of the room, which gave her a perfect view of the hybrid security desk-nurse's station. Nobody was ever looking back.

As she neared the end of her second time reading _Jane Eyre_ , Emily got a brief view of what sort of behaviors the doctors expected to observe. She listened as the woman from the room next to hers began moaning, "Please, I have to go home, I have cats to feed!" Emily watched the woman shuffle out into the hallway, tripping over her much-too-large hospital socks, and asked to make a phone call. She called her husband and reminded him to feed the cats, and then began begging him to bring her home.

At this moment, a nurse punched a code into the doors (doors which, of course, automatically locked) from the outside, and they swung open to grant her access. Woman Next Door evidently saw her opportunity: she quietly set down the phone and, very calmly, walked towards her room… and then past her room… and then out the door. She didn't run. She made it halfway down the hall before security noticed and brought her back. Moments after they got her back into her room, threatening to restrain her if she did not stay put, Woman Next Door had some sort of medical emergency- which Emily wholeheartedly believed was faked out of spite- and was wheeled off to a medical ward.

This was Emily's sole source of excitement for the three days. JJ never came to visit; Emily had hoped that she would be able to fake her way in, pretending to be family, but evidently she had no such luck. Emily was granted minimal external stimuli, actually: three times a day, a nurse brought in an inedible meal and asked, "How are we feeling now?" to which Emily would always respond, "Better." It took until the end of the second day, when Emily was already drifting off into sleep, for the resident psychiatrist to come see her. He sat down on the edge of her bed.

"Hello, Miss Prentiss, I'm Dr. Meyer, I'm the psychiatrist."

Emily sat up, immediately displaying what she knew were classic signs of discomfort, but which she couldn't seem to prevent: crossing her arms, folding her legs up against her chest, tilting her head down. "Nice to meet you, Doctor."

"Why don't you tell me what brings you here?"

"What brings me here? Ah, a self-inflicted laceration that required stitches. Evidently that was cause for doctors to question my ability to survive."

Dr. Meyer, Emily could already tell, was one of those annoying people who nodded an awful lot and always pretended to know exactly how everybody else felt. "Alright. Tell me about this laceration. Were you trying to hurt yourself?"

Emily's instinctive response would have been something to the effect of a snarky, 'Doctor, isn't that the point?' But she knew that wouldn't get her anywhere. "Yes, I was trying to hurt myself. But I was not trying to kill myself."

"Mmhmm. Okay. Then why?"

"Maladaptive coping mechanism?"

"Coping with…?"

"Stress, anxiety? Maybe residual depression from a more difficult time? It was a rough few days. I didn't deal with it well. But I'd been doing a lot better before that, and I'm not suicidal."

The doctor let out a heavy sigh, shifted his weight, and asked Emily the standard questions: "Do you think you can keep yourself safe?" "If you feel unsafe, do you have somewhere you can go?" and so on. After perhaps fifteen minutes, he bestowed upon Emily the words she'd been dying to hear:

"Miss Prentiss, I would be lying if I said I wasn't concerned about your emotional state. But it is hospital policy to enforce the minimum amount of restriction possible- that is, if we think you're safe to go home, we send you home. We're keeping you another day still, but you don't seem suicidal, and you don't seem nonfunctional. My recommendation would be that you seek psychiatric treatment outside of here, but… my professional opinion is that we don't need to keep you here past tomorrow."

Emily nearly cried. _Thank God._

/

Those same seventy-two hours, so dull for Emily, were full of chaos for JJ. Day one, she left the hospital, but returned a few minutes later with a book for Emily. Then came the dreaded confrontation: she had to go talk to Hotch. The moment JJ walked into the office, Hotch was standing in the doorway of his office, waiting for her. He motioned for her to join him and stayed in the doorway until she was already inside his office. They stood in silence for a few moments; JJ thought it best to wait until Hotch spoke. She counted her breaths, and then:

"How much of this did you know?"

"Hotch, I-"

"Did you know that this might happen?"

JJ took a deep breath. "I knew that she'd had a history with self-harm. I knew that it was an occasional occurrence, but she was working really hard to cope more effectively. And she'd always been so careful, making sure she didn't need stitches… I knew that she was struggling, but no, I did not see this coming."

"You should have come to me, JJ."

"I know, Hotch, and I'm sorry, but you know Emily. You know how private she is. I thought if I told anybody else, she'd shut down."

Hotch moved to sit in his desk chair. "I have to report this, of course. Emily will undergo a mandatory psychiatric evaluation, and it will be determined whether not she's safe to be in the field. It's… too early for me to say how this might go; I have minimal detail. But Strauss doesn't exactly seem hopeful."

"I understand, but Hotch- I mean, she isn't suicidal. That helps, doesn't it?"

"It might. It also might not."

JJ nodded slowly, and, fighting back tears, returned to her own office, ignoring the concerned looks from Reid and Morgan. The rest of day one was spent poring over paperwork. When at last she was leaving, Morgan and Garcia caught her in the elevator. There was casual chatter, and then, at the very last second, it seemed that Garcia couldn't restrain herself any longer:

"Hey, chickie. Why so glum?"

"I'm alright, Garcia, I just… I'm okay…" JJ's speech came out far more distant and disconnected than she had wanted it to; it was clear that there was something wrong. Thanks to Garcia's impeccable timing, though, JJ finished her reply just as the elevator doors opened. She rushed out to her car and drove home in a complete daze. She paced the apartment about a half dozen times, but this was the fundamental difference between JJ and Emily: JJ could not isolate in times of distress. JJ needed support, she needed to be told that everything would be okay.

So without even considering her actions, JJ got in the car and drove. She arrived at Spencer's door around nine in the evening and prayed that he wasn't too preoccupied. _Deep breath, knock once. Deep, deep breath, knock three times._

Spencer opened the door with a cheery, "Hey, JJ!" but immediately sensed the serious tone of her visit. He cleared his throat, ushered his friend inside, and waited a moment for her to start talking. When all JJ did was glance around frantically, toying with her hair, Spencer took it upon himself to ask: "Um, JJ, are you okay?"

JJ nodded, then shook her head. "Yeah. No. Um. I mean, I promised I wouldn't talk about this without telling her first, but I… and you're all going to find out anyway, and… I mean, I think you of all people deserve to know…"

"What do you mean by that, JJ? What do you mean, me of all people? What is this about?"

"It's about Emily, Spence. You of all people, because… a while back, I overheard something I wasn't supposed to. You were talking to Emily about… Dilaudid. Things were really rough for you, even when it'd been okay for a while, and she was there for you. So I guess I just thought you'd want to know…"

"JJ, you're scaring me."

"Emily's in the hospital, Spence. She was admitted early this morning. She… she gave herself a pretty deep cut. She split an artery, Spence, she did it to herself, and I… I should have known, Spence, I'm so sorry, I should have known she would…"

"JJ, I need you to take a deep breath. Why did Emily cut herself?"

"Oh God, Spencer, she… I knew it had been a problem. She'd been doing it on and off since she was just a teenager, and but she was trying so hard not to. She was trying so hard, Spencer! I don't know what happened, I don't know why last night… she says she didn't mean to go that far. She wasn't suicidal. I thought she would be okay... She was so drunk, Spence…"

It took every ounce of willpower in Spencer's body to remain calm. He certainly did not _feel_ calm- how could he? His dear friend, an important member of the team so like family to him, his flight chess partner and confidante, was sitting in the hospital recovering from wounds inflicted as a result of distress he didn't even know she was facing. But his hysterics would do no good in consoling JJ, and so he stiffly pulled her close.

"Let me ask you this, JJ: how could you have seen this coming? No, listen. From what you've told me, it seems like you genuinely believed that she was safe. Maybe she believed it, too- if she was intoxicated, then her impulse control would have been greatly diminished and her ability to gauge how much harm she was doing would have been compromised. You couldn't have predicted this. Now, what is happening next?"

"Um," said JJ, sniffling, "she's on a seventy-two hour hold. They'll evaluate her again on Wednesday and see if she… needs to be admitted to the psych ward."

"Okay," Spencer replied, trying so hard to seem brave, "so then there's nothing that we can do right now. Can you take another deep breath? Remember that. I know you must feel overwhelmed, like you need to help somehow, but right now all you can do is wait. Okay?"

"Okay. Um, Spence?"

"Yeah?"

"I'm… I'm really scared."

Spencer nodded. "I know, JJ. Why don't you lie down for a little while? You look exhausted."

JJ scoffed. "That's code for 'you look like hell.'"

Spencer just nodded, smiling softly, and went to fetch JJ a blanket.

/

JJ spent almost every free moment of those three days with Spencer. At first, they talked about Emily, and Spencer tried to relate by sharing a few stories about his mother, about adjusting to her institutionalization and about feeling helpless to help her. He was private about that part of his life, but he knew that JJ needed to feel understood. When Tuesday night rolled around, JJ said a silent prayer to Rosaline, both an "I miss you" and a "please help me. Please help Emily." It was the second of February- the anniversary was in two days.

 **A/N:** Sorry for the delay on this chapter! I spent quite a while trying to figure out how to tackle these three days. Eventually I settled on loaning Emily some of my own memories, which gave me an excuse to tell a snippet of my favorite hospital anecdote- Woman Next Door really was a woman in the room next door to mine in Crisis Intervention who really did yell about cats, sneak out of the unit, and have a (probably fake) medical emergency. It's probably among the most interesting things ever to happen to me. Anyway, thank you all so much for reading!


	17. Chapter 17

February fourth. For Emily, it was Judgment Day. For JJ, it was a day of chaos and mourning. For Reid, a day spent trying to process the situation, a day to further his knowledge of self-harm and how it related to various emotional disturbances, trying to piece together the story Emily had never told him. For Hotch, a day of phone tag to his bosses, attempting to persuade them into going easy on Emily; for Morgan and Garcia, the day held nothing but confusion. They knew something was horribly wrong, but neither would ever suspect that the great Emily Prentiss, so skilled with compartmentalization and not letting her emotions overwhelm her, would be in such trouble.

And then there was Rossi, who had taken a brief leave of absence in order to complete a brief book tour. He'd been reluctant to leave his team behind, but they had all assured him that everything would be fine while he was gone- they could handle the job without him. Rossi was the first homecoming of the day. He made his grand entrance into the squadroom long after everybody else had settled in.

"Hey, Rossi! How'd it go?" asked Morgan, tossing a hackey sack up and down. The sudden break in silence forced Reid to look up from his research and offer a distracted, "Oh, hi, Rossi," before resuming his work. Rossi scoffed, but elected not to tease the man who clearly had so much on his mind.

Garcia came running in just then, having been watching security cameras for Rossi's arrival. She held a tin of sugar cookies (homemade, of course, as Rossi deserved only the best), which she immediately handed to Rossi. "Wow, David Rossi, famous author David Rossi just returning from a book tour, David Rossi? Welcome back!"

Glad as Rossi was to see Garcia- an emotion which quite surprised him as he recalled how reluctant he'd been to accept her when he first joined the team- he was preoccupied with the two closed office doors: Hotch's and JJ's. Hotch, he knew, never cared much for being interrupted, so he made a beeline straight for JJ. He knocked softly, and slowly opened the door, lest he break her concentration on something important.

He found a red-eyed JJ with tear-stained cheeks, wrinkled clothes, biting her nails. She clearly had not been sleeping well. Rossi cleared his throat and waited for JJ to look up. When she did, she immediately wiped the tears from her eyes, tried to smooth her hair, and gave him a broad smile. "Rossi! Welcome back."

"What's going on?"

"What? Nothing! Nothing. I'm fine."

"You know I've been a profiler for longer than you've been alive, right?"

"Yeah. Ah, today is the fourth, Rossi, the fourth of February. Otherwise known as… the day Ros died. I'm really okay, I just…" JJ moved to toy with Ros's necklace, "I mean, I'll be fine. I just need a few minutes to pull myself together."

Rossi could be sarcastic, and Rossi could seem stoic, but at his heart he was nothing but a truly sentimental gentleman. He sensed that there was more to JJ's distress than she let on, but who was he to push her to talk when she had already given him a very, very valid reason? He retreated to his own office, electing to let Hotch come to him.

JJ could not stop looking at the phone. She expected Emily to call her as soon as she was discharged, or else to call her should she be allowed such privileges as soon as she was admitted. Being an adult, Emily would most likely reject doctor recommendations to stay hospitalized… but, although JJ desperately wanted to see Emily again, she hoped that the other woman would accept the help if she needed it. Ten minutes passed, and ten more, and ten more. JJ tried to occupy herself, but there was no distraction powerful enough. And then the phone rang.

"Emily?"

"Hey, Jayj."

"Well? What's happened? You're on your cell, are you home?"

"Um, actually, I'm just about to walk into the squadroom."

JJ hung up the phone and ran out to meet her. The second homecoming of the day: a slightly disheveled but acceptably put-together Emily walked through the doors and was nearly tackled by JJ. "Oh, God, Em, it's so good to see you…"

"Hey, Princess! Where've you been?" called Morgan from his desk. He'd not yet had a good look at Emily, but once he did, his tone immediately shifted. "Prentiss? Where were you?"

Garcia had quit vigilantly watching the security tapes when Rossi came in and had resumed proper work, but she'd taken to checking them every half-hour or so just to see if Emily would show up. When Garcia flipped on the screen and saw the two women hugging, Morgan still sitting at his desk, and Reid standing still as though he couldn't decide whether or not to interrupt the reunion, she ran to the squadroom.

"Emily! Lovebug! Where have you been?"

Emily wanted to snap at them. She knew it would be a lot easier if she acted like she'd just been sick, or taking a few days off, and reacted as though they were being intrusive… but there was a chance she would lose her job, and she felt they deserved the truth.

"Hey, guys, I'll tell you everything in a few minutes, okay? I need to check in with Hotch first."

So the crowd dispersed: Morgan and Reid returned to their desks; Garcia, refusing to return to her office until she was filled in, pulled a chair up next to Morgan's desk. JJ held Emily's hand and walked her to Hotch's office, and waited outside once the brunette entered.

Hotch didn't have to look up. "Close the door, Emily." Emily complied.

"First of all… it's good to see you safe."

"Thank you, sir."

"You haven't called me 'sir' since you first joined the team."

"I'm… I don't want to…"

Hotch actually cracked a smile despite the nature of their meeting. "It's alright. I got minimal details from JJ; why don't you tell me what happened?"

"Well. Um. It was a rough couple of days, and I didn't deal with it very well…"

"Prentiss, don't start with that. You're avoiding a real answer and you know it."

"Hotch, it's really a long story to explain how I got to this… honestly, it's… a poor choice in coping skills. It was a last resort. I've been doing really well about it, actually, this was just a fluke…"

"Listen. Your job is in jeopardy, Emily. I'm not saying that to intimidate or shame you; I just want you to understand your situation completely. In an ideal world, you would get help and return to work as normal. But this is not an ideal world, and it's unfortunately out of my hands… I'm advocating for you, Prentiss, but know that that may not be enough. And know that I'm going to need to see proof that you're capable of being safe in the field if I'm going to keep you on this team."

"I understand, Hotch, I do. And I know that I'm okay in the field, but I also know that it will take a lot to prove myself."

"I'm glad you understand. Now, what happens next is you will have a mandatory psychological evaluation. If they have reason to believe that you are not safe, you will either be put on desk duty or… let go. If you pass, there will almost certainly be precautions taken- maybe supervision in the field, maybe a brief period on desk duty, I'm not sure. But you will stay on the team."

"Okay. Wow. I… I appreciate you advocating for me, Hotch. Please let me know if there's anyway I can… reassure you. Make you feel better about my safety in the field or… anything."

"I will. You can go, Prentiss, the rest of the team looks eager to speak with you."

So Emily exited Hotch's office with a heavy heart but an attempt at a bright smile. She was not, as she had anticipated she would be, hounded with questions when she returned to her desk. Everybody simply stared at her, and she stood in silence until JJ came and took her hands. "Em, you don't have to talk…"

Emily nodded. "I know. But they deserve the truth. Um, as you know, I've been gone a few days… I was... in the hospital." Gasps from Morgan and especially Garcia. "I, um. I had a wound that required stitches… self inflicted. I was really out of it when the ambulance brought me in, and apparently my mumbling gave them cause to hold me for seventy-two hours' observation…"

Emily paused, and was preparing to continue when Garcia ventured to ask, "Oh, sweetpea… were you trying to…?"

"No. No, absolutely not."

"Then… why?"

Reid almost wanted to jump in with statistics and common reasons for self-harming just to save Emily from the question, but he kept quiet as Emily answered. "You know me. I… internalize things. I… um…" Emily squeezed JJ's hand so tight she thought it might break. How was she meant to explain this? "It started when I was a teenager. The cutting, I mean. It was much more of a problem then… now it's really rare, it really was very rare. I swear, it's not… I didn't expect it to cause such a problem. It was an accident."

Morgan stood from his desk, put his hands behind his head, and took a deep breath. "So this isn't a new thing." It wasn't a question, but Emily nodded in the affirmative anyway. Morgan took another deep breath, then curled his hand into a fist like he was about to punch his desk, but stopped himself. "Dammit, Prentiss! Why didn't you tell anybody? And you- JJ, you knew about this? How could _you_ not tell anybody?" He left before Emily or JJ could answer, taking a walk around the building to calm down. Emily's heart cracked and withered- she'd never meant to upset anybody.

"I… I'm so sorry. I'm so, so sorry."

Garcia pulled Emily in for perhaps the tightest hug of all time. "You don't need to be sorry, my love, you don't ever need to be sorry. You just need to be safe. Please, please be safe, okay?" Tears fell from Garcia's eyes and stained Emily's blouse, and even after she finished speaking, she maintained her hold on Emily until Hotch moved to stand outside of his office and watch the scene below, at which point she kissed Emily's head and said, "Gotta get back to work, precious. Come talk to me, okay? If you need to talk about this, or if you need a distraction… we can talk about your cat, or, um, plants, or anything!"

Emily simply nodded, and JJ took Garcia's place holding Emily.

"I'm so proud of you, Em. But… can you do me a favor?"

"Anything."

"Please stay with me a while. I mean, at my apartment. It's not that I don't trust you, I just…"

Emily felt slightly infantilized by the request, but this was JJ. She'd do anything. "Of course."


	18. Chapter 18

_A/N: I suppose there's no excuse for leaving a fic dormant for so many months, is there? The best I can offer is my mental health has been... not great this year, and it's been difficult to focus on writing anything, especially something so sad. I'm making no promises about reviving this story for the long-term, just in case, but I have made a solid effort the last few days to write for it, so hopefully I can get on a roll and keep writing! Thank you all so much for sticking with me on this._

Morgan remained stoic for the remainder of the day. He was in part angry that Emily had kept such a dangerous secret, and in part angry that JJ had helped keep it secret, but if he was to be completely honest with himself, he was also furious that he hadn't figured it out on his own- that he hadn't seen the signs and intervened.

Reid didn't know whether or not Emily would be okay knowing that JJ had come to him for help, so he kept his speech vague. "It's, ah, it's really great to see you, Emily."

Emily was not officially back to work just yet- that would have to wait until she was cleared and declared competent- but Hotch let her hang around the office. She bounced between desks, naturally gravitating towards JJ but taking the opportunity to reconnect with Reid if he didn't seem terribly busy, and occasionally visiting Garcia in what she had taken to affectionately calling her "Bat Cave." The walk to the first such visit was nerve-wracking- Garcia would of course want to know everything, and Emily could hardly understand everything herself- but she had missed this techie ray of sunshine nearly as much as she had missed JJ, and a visit, Emily decided, was absolutely necessary.

So early in the afternoon, Emily knocked gently on the door and entered the room. Garcia spun around, prepared to make some witty remark welcoming her visitor, but upon seeing Emily's nervous face, she shied away from her humor. "Hey, lovebug. Have a seat," she said, gesturing to an empty space on the desk near where Garcia's chair sat.

"Hey, Penelope."

"How, um… I mean, obviously, given the circumstances, you're probably not doing great, but… how are you?"

"Well," sighed Emily, "I mean, like I said, it was a fluke. An accident. I… really am okay. Maybe not perfect. Um, definitely not perfect. But okay." It was physically painful for Emily to admit that things weren't as good as they could be, and it broke Penelope's heart to hear.

"Listen, babydoll, I know this can't be easy for you to talk about. You don't have to tell me the whole story. But can you try to help me understand? Like, how did it get to this point, and how do we keep it from getting back there?"

"Pen, it's just that… I don't even understand it. I don't know how I got to this point. I didn't think I was heading anywhere in this direction…"

Penelope could see the tears welling up in Emily's eyes and, as much as she wanted to understand the other woman's point of view, she had to take pity. "Okay. You don't have to get too into it with me, as long as you talk to somebody. Which brings us to JJ, now, doesn't it? Until you have professional help- and, Emily, I can promise that you'll be getting professional help- can you talk to JJ?"

"I had been talking to her… to the best of my ability."

"And what's the nature of that relationship?"

"What?" Emily was beginning to feel intimidated. Barring the aftermath of Penelope being shot, Emily had never heard the perky tech analyst speak so solemnly for so long.

"Well, chickadee, something's changed…"

"No. Nothing has changed, Pen, I promise. JJ and I are friends, just like you and I are friends."

The air was tense and thick. Emily was obviously overly defensive, and Garcia couldn't risk pushing the brunette away any more than she already had. "Okay, lovey," she said with a wink, turning back to face her computer screens. She did, after all, have work to do.


	19. Chapter 19

Emily showed up at JJ's apartment that night focused on little other than getting Sergio out of his carrier as soon as possible- he hated being confined, much like Emily. Sergio had been staying with a neighbor while she was in the hospital, but Emily couldn't bear to be away from him a day longer. After a hurried excuse to the neighbor girl- _yeah, I'm fine, I'd had stomach virus for a few days and was just pretty dehydrated, I guess-_ she took the cat she secretly called the _light of her life_ and headed to JJ's, along with a bag packed with all that she would need for three days. Three days would surely be all it took to regain JJ's trust, right? Three days would be all it took to gain JJ's approval to go back to her apartment and revel in solitude. As much as she'd missed JJ (though it still felt odd to her that she should miss JJ so very much), she'd missed being alone almost more.

So she stood outside of JJ's apartment, shifting her weight from one foot to the other, visibly anxious. She reached a hand out to knock on the door, then retracted it, then reached it out again. _What's your hesitation, Prentiss?_ she berated herself, _You're an adult. You can handle this. And it's not like you can just bail on her- not unless you want an ambulance sent to your apartment by a terrified Jennifer._ She knocked once, twice, three times, and took a deep breath and a step back.

JJ answered the door almost immediately. She was clad in an oversized FBI academy t-shirt and loose flannel pajama bottoms, and her tear-stained cheeks, red-rimmed eyes, and quiet "hey" sent a wave of guilt through Emily's body for two reasons:

One, because she was obviously the cause of a lot of this upset.

Two, because she, like the self-absorbed idiot she felt she was, had forgotten the date. It was not just Judgment Day for her- it was the day from hell for JJ.

Setting Sergio's carrier and her bag on the ground, Emily allowed herself to fall into JJ's arms, using the excuse that JJ needed comfort- not admitting that she needed it, too.

"Hey yourself," she said, placing a hand on the back of JJ's head, which the blonde had buried in the crook of Emily's neck. "Let's get inside, okay? You need to sit down." She guided JJ to the couch and offered a quick disclaimer: "I hope it's okay that Sergio is here. He hates being away from me…"

JJ swallowed her immediate response- _so do I-_ and simply nodded. "Of course it's okay," she said, wiping eyes on the back of her sleeve. "I missed you."

"I missed you, too, Jay. I'm so sorry-"

"No, I'm sorry. I should have been there, I should have known-"

Emily cut her off with a hand on JJ's shoulder. "No, you shouldn't have. Even I didn't know. Jayj, it wasn't supposed to- I didn't mean to- I wasn't trying to…"

"So you've said," said JJ, "but the fact remains that you…"

"I know," Emily responded, and, being herself, she couldn't help but add a sarcastic remark to try to lighten the mood. "Do you think we'll ever learn to finish our sentences?"

JJ scoffed. "Probably not."

Emily crossed her legs, then uncrossed them. "I'm going to get us some drinks, okay?"

" _Not_ alcohol, Em," said JJ, unusually harsh. There was a tense silence before Emily ventured to respond:

"I'm not a child, Jayj."

JJ snorted. " _That's_ debatable." Another tense silence. JJ could see the walls behind Emily's eyes going up, but refused to back down. "Look," she sighed, "I know you hate being babied, but can you blame me? You haven't exactly been taking care of yourself."

Emily, too, refused to back down. In truth, she'd been planning on making tea, but now her stubborn heart was dead-set on arguing this to the end. "That doesn't make it your job to baby me. Just because I'm a mess doesn't mean you have to clean it up."

Unrelenting, JJ countered: " _Somebody_ has to."

That was the last straw for Emily. That, to Emily, said it was a _burden_ for JJ to take care of her- that she was only looking out for Emily because _somebody_ had to. Those walls that had been rising locked into place; she rapidly mapped out her course of action. She couldn't let JJ know how much that hurt her- she wouldn't even admit to _herself_ how much it hurt her- but she couldn't go back to where she was upon arriving. Sighing, she grabbed a glass of water for either of them and sat back on the couch, tucking her legs underneath her.

"What did I miss at work?" she asked, tentative.

"What did you miss- Em, where did that come from?"

"Well?"

"... Nothing."

Emily watched the clock on JJ's wall tick while considering her answer. Finally, she reconciled with herself that it was time to lose the argument JJ probably didn't even think they were having. "I'm sorry," she said, ducking her head.

JJ didn't know if she was sorry for changing the subject so abruptly, for being so harsh, or for nearly killing herself. It didn't really matter. She was too tired and sad to be angry. She shifted her position on the couch closer to Emily, leaned her head against Emily's shoulder, and let out a soft: "It's all such a mess, Em."

"What is, Jennifer?" This was asked not because Emily couldn't imagine JJ seeing life as a mess- there was certainly reason for that- but because she needed to know to _which_ mess JJ was referring.

JJ's reply did not clarify. She made a vague gesture with her hands, stifled a sob, and said, "Everything." Then she burst into tears- not cute, gentle tears, but heavy sobs, the kind that turn your face red and your voice high-pitched.

Emily wrapped an arm around JJ. "I'm here, baby," she cooed, not thinking about her words- just instinctively comforting. "I'm right here. Talk to me."

JJ kept crying, though, and could not speak. When the sobs cleared, she sniffled, buried her face further in Emily's shoulder, and whispered, "It isn't fair."

"No," she said, holding JJ's hand, "it's not. But listen to me. I'm right here, okay? And Ros… she'd be so proud of you, Jayj. It's not fair that she's gone, but if she were here, she'd be so proud of you."

"How could she be proud when- when- when-" and JJ dissolved into tears once more, quieter this time.

"When what, love?"

JJ took note of Emily's use of pet names, but didn't have the emotional capacity to blush. "When I'm losing you like I lost her."

That hit Emily like a freight train to the gut. "You're not-"

"I am, Em. You're not okay."

Biting her tongue, Emily resisted the urge to argue. "No," she conceded, "I'm not. But I'm going to be. I… I'm gonna get better, okay? I am. I'm gonna get better." She didn't believe these words- she firmly believed that somebody as far gone as she could never get better- but she _wanted_ to believe them, for JJ's sake.

"Will you get help?" asked JJ, finally drying her tears.

"Yeah," said Emily, immediately. This was not only because she was backed against a wall- her options seemed to be either get help or be out of a job- but because, finally, she wanted to actually _try_ to do better.

"Okay," said JJ. "Okay. Okay. Hey- you called me baby."

"What? I didn't- I didn't- did I?"

"Yeah, because you _loooove_ me."

Emily nudged JJ. "Shut up," she teased, turning on the TV. "I do not."

"Do so!"

"Well…"

JJ's heart skipped a beat. She was joking, but was Emily? She didn't get an answer tonight. They watched _Food Network_ in silence and fell asleep on the couch, limbs intertwined.


End file.
